Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!husc6!uwvax!astroatc!nicmad!tissot
From: tissot@nicmad.UUCP (Kevin Tissot)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Hard disk problem
Summary: Seagates, low level formatting
Message-ID: <3050@nicmad.UUCP>
Date: 18 Aug 88 15:08:29 GMT
References: <20173@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Nicolet Instrument Corp., Madison, WI
Lines: 31

In article <20173@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, msriram@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (M.G. SriRam) writes:
> Hi! i would appreciate hearing your comments on the following problem.  I have a
> WYSE PC AT compatible, 12.5 MHz and i installed a SEAGATE ST225 hard disk in it.  It
> worked very well for about 5 months and then it intermittently refused to boot from
> the hard disk.  ie, afte counting up RAM it would hang. Also, when it did come up
> I would get 'sector not found' errors.
> The technical person at the place where i bought the hard disk told me that there
> was nothing wrong with the hardware, and that doing a low-level format on the disk
> would fix the problem. he also said that such a format should be done as a routine
> every so often, eg every 9 - 12 months. however, i am not fully convinced about this.
> what do you think? does it make sense?


1) We were an OEM for Seagate disk drives (ST-251, ST-251N) for a short while.
   We switched to Miniscribe because of problems such as the one you mention.
   (I don't know that the ST-225 would share the same problems as the ST-251,
   but I do know that Seagate does some tricky things to get 28 ms seek times
   from a stepper-motor drive)

2) You should *NOT* have to low-level format your drive every 9-12 months
   unless the drive cannot maintain data due to poor media or mechanical
   degradation (i.e. the drive is poorly designed). 

3) These are my statements and are not the official words of my employer.

					KT

-- 
===============================================================================
Kevin Tissot                     {ucbvax,harvard,rutgers}!uwvax!nicmad!tissot 
--------------------->           {att,decvax,rolls}!nicmad!tissot
===============================================================================