SUMMARY: Disk Offline

From: John W. Cieply (JWC@icf.hrb.com)
Date: Sat Dec 11 1993 - 01:25:56 CST


Original Question:

>Hello Managers,
> We have a Sun 1.3Gig connected to SPARCstation 2, running 4.1.3 OS. We
>were using it about 6 months ago, without a problem. We cannot seem to access
>it now.
>
>The probe-scsi will see the disk, when we boot the System, the following is
>displayed:
>
>sd2 at esp0 target 2 lun 0
>sd2: Vendor 'SEAGATE', product 'ST41600N', (unkown capacity)
>
>If we run the format command, the disk cannot be found. We get an
>
>sd2 offline
>
>Is the Disk Bad? Has anyone seen this happen? Can we recover the files on this
>system?
>
>Thanks for any help you can give.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The consensus was that the controller is working but the disk has not spun up.

Repair options:
      - If the disk is spinning up but not being sensed by the controller
        (you can tell by the sound of the disk) you should be able to get it i
        repaired and save your data since the repair will involve only the
        controller.
  
      - If the disk is not spinning up you most likely will lose the data
        unless you send the disk to a data recovery service. You can try to
        LIGHTLY tap on the drive in the hope that this will jar the disk into
        motion.

      - It may be a "stiction" problem wherein the drive fails to spin up due
        to the motor not having enough starting torque to overcome the friction
        of the bearings combined with the heads resting on the platters.

Others mentioned:
        - SCSI termination, bad mother board. But, the problem occurs when the
          disk is connected to other machines.
        - jumper set incorrectly. But, the drive was never removed from it's
          enclosure.

Thanks to the following who responded:
        markm@kandinsky.intel.com "Mark Morrissey"
        heas@chpc.org "Heas"
        terry@dcvast.com (Terry Britton)
        perryh@pluto.rain.com (Perry Hutchison)
        steve.carter@aea.orgn.uk (Steve Carter 2367)
        larry@ma.pdc.com (Larry Freeman)
        STEVEN@PSPORE.cv.com "Steven Lim"

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   | John Cieply | HRB Systems |
   | | An E-SYSTEMS Company |
   | Mail code: 07f | PO Box 60 |
   | Internet: jwc@icf.hrb.com | State College, PA 16804-0060 |
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