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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: MigaMan on August 02, 2006, 01:12:43 AM
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I have an A600 and I was using the computer and all of a sudden the HD Light is staying on. It seems like everything is working properly (I can still access the HD, and I even copied files to it) except for the fact that the graphics mem keeps changing slightly. I also tried doing a couple of power cycles and resets and still the light stays on. It comes on right when the machine turns on too. Anyone ever see this before?
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Which filesystem are you using? If it is FFS the drive may be invalidated - the constant access is the OS trying to re-validate the data.
Take care,
James
x
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I am using FFS. I just formatted the HD today, and it seemed to be working fine. I will try validating the HD again.
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If it's a modern drive it's normal for the HD light to stay on (and flicker when the drive is accessed). My Hitachi 20GB in my A1200 does the same thing.
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I will try validating the HD again.
You didn't understand. It validates itself, you don't need to do anthing. Just don't switch it off while it is still working, because then it will start from the beginning again when it is switched on next time.
Bye,
Thomas
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Yes, I've seen such happen in my A1200's. Just leave it alone until it has finished. If it doesn't sort itself out, then post again. In fact post again either way - it would be nice to know that it works.
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Ok, so I let the drive sit there validating for about an hour and it still hadn't finished. So I decided to install a Hitachi 20GB that I had lying around and it HD light is still lit up. I am still able to access the HD though. This drive was manufactured in 2002. The older drive was an IBM made in 1997. As long as it works I guess I'll use it.
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BTW, when I added a buffered IDE interface (in my case the Elbox 4xEIDE'99) the light went off.
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BTW, when I added a buffered IDE interface (in my case the Elbox 4xEIDE'99) the light went off.
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I'm just worried that the constant working of the HD will do a number on HD life.
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Hum,
T minus 50000 hours MTBF (mean time before failure), and counting...
(BTW, that`s nearly six years)
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Well then I only have two years left if the HD has been used for 4....
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What size is the HD in your A600. Remember that the machine is only a 68000 at 7MHz as standard, and that will take a while to validate a large disk.
Also MTBF refers to constant use, if you turn the machine off for, say, 16 hours each day then your life extends to 18 years - but also more wear happens when switching on that at any other time.
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The original hard drive that I had in was 2GB. The new one is 20GB. I let it sit for over an hour with the original one in.
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I have no techie figures here, but I remember my first A1200 drive being 80Mb, and taking hours to revalidate after this happened, even with a 68030 accelerator. Anybody have an idea of time per Mb ?? :-?
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MigaMan wrote:
I let it sit for over an hour with the original one in.
It shouldn't take more than a few minutes.
You should first check if it is really validation or if it's only the HDD light.
Open a shell window and enter
info
This will list all mounted drives. If one of your HDD partitions has a status of "validating", then let it do its work.
If all drives are either read/write or read only or "no disk in drive", then it's not the disk-validator which causes the HDD light to stay lit.
With the disk-validator running you should hear the HDD working and the boot process should need twice as long as usual. Also you cannot write to the validating partition and it shows as 100% full.
Bye,
Thomas
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@MigaMan
You said you'd been writing to the drive OK, so it can't be validating, it's something else.
How much space does it have left?
JaX
[EDIT: Oh, I see you just reformatted too. I'll get me coat.}
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With the 20GB hard drive in, I have a 1GB and 1.8 GB partitions. The weird thing is when I turned on the Amiga today, it seems like its working normal now. Now it just seems like it is randomly reading the HD when I'm not doing anything. But, the light is not staying constantly on now. I ran "info" in the shell and it tells me the status on my two partitions are "read/write", so I guess it is ok now. It's just weird that it has been doing it the whole week and all of a sudden just stopped.
EDIT: Nevermind, after about 20 min. the light is solid again. I was thinking maybe it was something about formatting it with directory cache on so I reformatted and still have the same problem.