[svlug] Care & feeding of *old* SCSI HDs

[Rafael Skodlar]

On Sun, 11 Oct 1998, Neil Kittipalo wrote:

> Good evening from Bangkok,
> 	I was recently given this huge & aged Seagate Wren ST41200 1GB SCSI
> drive. 8 discs 15 heads full height. Date seems to be circa 1991.
> 	It works great & has no bad sectors etc.
> 	I was wondering how best to use it & have 2 options.
> 		a) In a server on 24/7 for extra non vital stuff.
> 		b) In another box which gets turned on & off
> several 		                   times a day.
> 	What is the accepted wisdom as to the best choice for keeping such a
> beast bright eyed & bushy tailed for as many years as possible?
> 		Neil

Power on/off kills any kind of a hardware relatively soon. If your drive
was spining all these years I doubt it has much life left in it unless
it's a cat with 9 lives. 

I suggest you run it in non-stop mode in non vital environment. Too bad
that you can't replace the bearings since that's the most obvious part
that goes bad in any drive. Second most common problem develops in
frequently power cycled drives, where heads become contaminated and that
causes a head crash sooner or later. 

What kind of a machine needs to get powered down many times a day? You are
not talking about the well known OS that's designed that way, are you?


   Rafael


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