Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!silver!hanj From: hanj@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Jining Han) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Harddisk Problem Message-ID: <26590@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> Date: 26 Sep 89 05:19:28 GMT Reply-To: hanj@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Jining Han) Distribution: usa Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington Lines: 39 A friend's harddisk is on the verge of breakdown: it's a 30 mb Seagate (he could not tell me the model over the phone) on an XT-clone. It started with a lot of bad sectors. Then we reformatted it some months ago and virtually got rid of the bad sectors. But since then the computer gets stuck every time "copy" command is used. I suspected that something is wrong with the RAM, but since "xcopy" works fine, we just ignore the "copy". Two months ago, his computer could not recognize the harddisk any more. First thing I thought of was bad connection, so I asked him to open the case and re-plug everything--that made him happy. But some days ago, things became really bad. "Invalid drive specification" became more and more frequent. Sick of opening the case, he unscrewed the harddisk and made it "external," so that whenever it's not recognized, he gives the harddisk a little knock or shake to wake it up, as he is very sure that some internal connection is making all the trouble. Though he can still use or abuse the harddisk, he is desperately looking for a way out of this agony and sense of insecurity. A new disk seems to be the easiest way out. Yet some questions still remain: 1. Is there any connection between the harddisk breakdown and the "copy" command not being usable? Is there any potential cause for another breakdown if a new one is installed? 2. Assuming that it's safe to install a new one, does he need to change the controller? This question arises because he no longer likes 30 mb disks. What will his controller do to a new 20 mb harddisk (turning it into a 30 mb)? Please do not tell him to throw away the whole computer. It's only two years young. Your help is very much appreciated. Jining Han