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From: info-mac@uw-beaver
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: Disk Erasure Problem
Message-ID: <207@uw-beaver>
Date: Fri, 14-Dec-84 15:48:55 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.207
Posted: Fri Dec 14 15:48:55 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Dec-84 03:14:00 EST
Sender: daemon@uw-beaver
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 26

From: Rob Gurwitz 

I have recently had several disks that have gotten progressively flakey
and then unreadable.  The problem sure looks like magnetization, since
it seems to occur on disks that I put in and out of the drive frequently,
like my MacTerminal disk.

The symptoms start with occaisional system bombs, progress to occaisional
and then more frequent disk unreadable messages, failure at various stages
of startup (in the system, the finder, etc.), and finally nothing at all.
If I reinit the disks and recopy them, they work fine.  I've also verified
the flakeyness by carrying the bad disks to other Macs and get similar
results.

I'm fairly careful with my disks and I don't think they've been exposed
to unusual magnetic fields or high static.  I called my dealer and am
waiting for a replacement drive.

Has anyone else had this experience?  Should I avoid using my Mac at all
until the new drive is installed?  Is there some demagnitization procedure
recommended by Apple?

Rob Gurwitz
BBN Laboratories
gurwitz@bbn-unix
decvax!bbncca!gurwitz