Help! Disk won't spin up

[djskankho]

I have a 15k rpm Seagate Cheetah that just won't spin up. In the past few times I've booted from a cold boot it took a few tries before it would start but now nothing. I tried removing the other 2 harddrives and all the fans from the power supply but that didn't help.

The weird thing is that once it is spinning it is completely reliable. Never had a problem with it while in use. The LED on the drive lights up a blinks a little (it's supposed to stay solidly on while spinning up).

The signal cable could be damaged, could this be causing this kind of problem? Is my disk dying? Windows is on this disk but I have redhat installed on another. Is there anything I can do with that? Please help quick!

 

[Ice Czar]

check your power connector
get that cable replaced
there is also a delayed spinup option in the SCSI protocol
if the signal is somehow borked...
if the drive is truely seized about all you can do is the freezer trick (see FAQ)

 

[djskankho]

I tried switching power connectors on the same line from the power supply and another lead. No luck. I actually tried the delayed spin-up thing and the drive actually spun once when I had that option enabled.

When you say signal, do you mean SCSI signal or power? Because I'm gonna run out to CompUSSR today and try an find a new SCSI cable to test.

I don't really have any data on the drive and it is under warranty (thank god for beastly warranties on enterprise drives). So I think I'm just going to send it to seagate if the new scsi cable doesn't work.

 

[Ice Czar]

I meant the delay spinup might be bad and actually be telling the drive somehow not to start, its not intitializing

if that is the case then a cable might help, but it could just as easily be the drive or even the controller
without cross parting it would be tough to tell
hopefully one of our SCSI Masters will be around soon with some better advice

 

[scottatwittenberg]

this might be bad advice, but i had a hard drive (on the computer i am using at work right now actually) stop on me... it made some horrible sound... i tried restarting the comptuer several times,, unplugging, replugging it in....

then i took it out and hit it on the side a few times with some big metal scissors... it worked flawlessly until a few weeks later when i had a stapler on top of the case and was stapling through 30-40 sheets of paper at a time.. i hit the stapler down real hard and made it freeze up again... so i repeated the scissor to the side trick and it worked... and 3 months later the drive still works and hasn't given me a problem since..

 

[Ice Czar]

the freezer trick and the ye olde smack are measures of last resort however
if its worn out bearings and or seized bearing then they might work
but at a very high risk to the drive, once you do those, its generally time for rescue and to downgrade the drive to a role in a redundant array where if it fails the array can still be rebuilt

 

[djskankho]

i didn't even bother with trying a new scsi cable. I called seagate and the guy said it just sounded like the bearings dried out and it couldn't overcome the friction to start spinning.

Thanks for the advice though. I did try smacking it a little and shaking it (shhh don't tell seagate) but that didn't help. I didn't really have any data on the drive I cared about getting back so all will work out.

Except, I was on the phone with warranty services from seagate and they sent me to tech support. I talked to tech support until it was 6:20 and then called warranty services back to get them to cross ship a replacement and they closed 10 minutes early!!! grrrr