Clicking SCSI disks

[Peter Coghlan]

Antonio Carlini wrote:
>
> So I thought I'd tap the wisdom of the list. Is there any way that 
> people have used to successfully recover data from RZ28, RZ29 disks 
> (which all worked in 2003 :-))? Has anyone tried freezing a double 
> bagged drive? Was it successful? If so, how long did you freeze it for? 
> These disks are in StorageWorks containers ... should I remove them 
> before freezing?
>

I have some RZ28 (2GB?) disks but I don't recall having any difficulties
with them.

I do have some RZ29B (4.3GB) disks that fail to spin up when requested to
unless they are given some physical encouragement in the form of a sharp
twist or some vigourous tapping.  They can be heard to make a very faint
and short purr when trying and failing to spin up but no clicking noises
and no data issues.

I have more than one RZ26L (1.05GB) disk which I reinitialised and
installed a new system on which then failed horribly with nasty clicking
noises after working nicely for a very short time.  I haven't found any
way to fix this condition and I don't know if almost completely rewriting
them is what triggered it to happen or maybe it was because of sudden
activity after years of idleness.  I didn't try freezing them.

I also have one Compaq 9GB SCA disk which made heart-stoppingly loud
clunks and clicks at irregular intervals but continued to function
normally in this condition for several years.  I had copied it's contents
to a new disk but left it in place to see how it would fail.  It didn't.
I eventually took it out and examined it, found nothing obvious wrong,
put it back in and decided to make an audio recording of the noises it
had been making.  Of course, it then refused to make any more noises
after being disturbed and continues to work normally without any data
issues whatsoever.

Regards,
Peter Coghlan.