Help: SCSI hard drive won't work

[Varthall]

A SCSI hard drive of mine has suddenly stopped working. I was using my computer as normal (a PC with WinUAE installed), and suddenly the system reported read/write errors. I rebooted and the SCSI controller couldn't recognise the drive anymore. Reading the drive info thru the controller BIOS, it shows only the first four letters of the drive code and some garbage on the screen. The hard disk is an old IBM one (I've read somewhere that IBM drives were often unreliable, so the have been discontinued). It's a DCAS model, 2 gigas sized.

I've tried several things: I've tapped lightly over the hard drive, as the discs inside could be stuck together. Nothing changed. I've tried a Toshiba disk repair on floppy, but it doesn't work as the bios fails to see the drive.

As a last resort I was thinking the drive could have a flashrom which is now corrupted (otherwise, where would be the information about the drive specifications stored?). I've found some hundred flashroms for ibm drives, I've checked some of them but none were for my drive. Am I wasting my time and I should bin the drive or it's just a minor problem which could be easily addressed?

Thanks in advance.
Varthall.

[xaccrocheur]

Bad news mate. Sounds like your drive is dead.

I know it won't help much so I won't elaborate, but judging by all the elements (symptoms, drive age AND type) it is now heading for a better world.

Where data is inconsistent, permanent... Where Angels compose chiptunes on A500s  ;-)

notice that I did'nt put out the "u should backup" phrase. You don't need that now. :-(

pX

[Tonyapa]

I've had similar problems both on my Amiga 2500 and PC's.  I took out the boards and cleaned all the contacts with contact cleaner, as well as all the plug-ins, blew out all the dust from the innards, put things together and the HDs worked like a charm.  If you hear the drives running, this could be a fix.  I have been running my 2500 daily since 1992 and haven't yet had to replace one of its drives (3 scsi drives totalling 1 gig).

[Varthall]

Tonyapa wrote:
I've had similar problems both on my Amiga 2500 and PC's.  I took out the boards and cleaned all the contacts with contact cleaner, as well as all the plug-ins, blew out all the dust from the innards, put things together and the HDs worked like a charm.  If you hear the drives running, this could be a fix.  I have been running my 2500 daily since 1992 and haven't yet had to replace one of its drives (3 scsi drives totalling 1 gig).

Great, I'll try this. Thanks for the tip. A hard drive that still works after 11 years is for sure a rare achievement  :-o