Stiction - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

9 Dec 2006

----------------Original Message:

Date: Sat, 09 Dec 2006 09:18:32 -0800
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Subject: Re: Stiction
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
	<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Message-ID: <457A7F68.30292.230D317 at cclist.sydex.com>
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On 9 Dec 2006 at 7:11, dwight elvey wrote:

...
  I have several friends that worked at Seagate when
they had
 problems of stiction. It was not a lubricant problem. It was
 caused by the surfaces being too smooth. When to really
 smooth surfaces sit together for a long time, the air is squeezed
 out. Once the surfaces really touch, there is a thing called
 molecular adhesion.
 Anyone that has worked with guage blocks is familair with
 this. 
That's the story that I got from the Seagate marketing engineer when 
I complained about new ST-225's occasionally showing this problem. .

However, Wikipedia states that the problem really is heat and 
lubricants:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction

So, the moral is "never trust a marketing guy", I guess.

Cheers,
Chuck

-------------------- Reply:

Or don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia; in my experience
(quite a few Seagate ST-225's and 251's, and recently even a Conner
IDE drive) it was always heads sticking to platters when the drive
was shut down after running for a long time. But perhaps bearing lube
was also a problem (that I just never ran across).

mike