IBM Deathstar Hell

[Charles Steinkuehler]

Kris Bodenheimer wrote:
> I have a deathstar that develops "bad sectors" every 2 days, using IBM's 
> Drive fitness utility I am on my 4th "erase and repair disk" which 
> appears to be a low level formatting.   The drive is under warranty for 
> 3 more months, but I can't get the Drive fitness utility to give me an 
> error that earns me an RMA.  Anyone know how to "help" this drive along 
> its slow death?  BTW this will be the 10th IBM Deathstar to go to hell 
> in the past 2 months.  Kris

Find a dry location (low humidity)

Get a piece of 70's shag carpet (bonus points for avacado green)

Do a dance to the HDD gods (moon-walking works well).  You know you're 
doing it right if a fluorescent bulb you're simply holding in your hand 
illuminates when you move your feet.

Select a large, important looking IC, and while chanting "The DeathStar 
will never defeat the powers of good", point your finger at the IC in a 
meanicing manner, then actually touch some of the pins.  Alternatively, 
hold one end of the fluorescent tube and point the other end at the 
drive...when the tube lights (may require a dimmed room to see if you 
don't have really low humidity and good shag carpet) your work is done.

Repeat as required until Drive Fitness gives you an acceptable error code.

Alternate methods would include:

- Hit the drive a couple of times with a cattle prod, electric fence, 
neon sign transformer, or similar high-voltage low-current supply.

- Hook a wire to the 12V supply and randomly touch connections on the 
drive with the other end (with power applied).  Be careful with this 
technique, however...if you latch up one of the controller IC's, it's 
possible for the case to pop off rather explosively, so make sure your 
eyes are out of the path of any possible projectiles.

- Put some *VERY* important data on the drive, then erase all other 
backups.  This should guarantee drive failure, but probably not until a 
few days *AFTER* the warrenty period expires.

- Soak the drive in liquid nitrogen, then drop on concrete to shatter it 
into 1000's of little pieces (What's the drive fitness code for this 
one? :-)

-- 
Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net