Hard Disk Troubleshooting

[pl1984]

A few weeks ago I purchased a IIci which is in excellent condition. The seller included everything with the system except for the hard disk which, I assume, he removed because it had personal information.

I took a trip to Ebay where I purchased an Apple 80MB SCSI hard disk (Quantum ProDrive ELS). I booted the Disk Utilities disk and the hard disk was mounted on the desktop (along with all of its contents). I immediately launched Disk Utility to repartition the disk (I wanted to start fresh).

Partitioning was successful so the next step I took was to initialize the disk. This failed on the verification step:



I've attempted to re-initialize multiple times and all attempts have failed. The next step I took was to use the test option to test the disk. Not surprisingly it failed:



I then powered off the system as I had somewhere to be.

When I came back to it I again booted into the Disk Utilities, launched Disk Utility, and was greeted with a message stating the system was unable to locate a suitable SCSI drive:



Multiple reboots and this message persists.

So, is there anything I am missing when it comes to installing this drive? The terminating resistors are in place. It's been a while since I've had to work with SCSI devices but I recall these being fairly easy to work with. Given it did work on initial installation I don't believe there's a problem with the configuration of the drive (there are no SCSI ID jumpers set so it's at its default). I do not hear the drive spin up (bad sign) but maybe it's not receiving the SCSI start command? As for the system it's in excellent shape and the seller said it was working fine prior to his removal of the drive.

It's my diagnosis the drive has failed but I wanted to see if there was anything I can try before I contact the seller. Apologies for the poor quality of the pics, difficult to take pics of a CRT with a smartphone due to the refresh interval.

 

[MacTech68]

If you're NOT hearing the initial spin-up of the drive (you may hear a tiny 'beep' a few times), then you probably have a stiction fault. The heads literally stick to the platters and prevent spin up.

You MIGHT be able to get the drive to spin up by warming it a little (NOT HOT). Whilst this may work once, the fault will most likely return when cold again.

These drives also suffer from rubber bumpers that perish, resulting in a sticky, gooey mess. However, this usually results in the drive spinning up but NOT making any re-calibration noises.

However, the drive may have media faults too, given the problems you experienced prior to the major failure.

 

[pl1984]

If you're NOT hearing the initial spin-up of the drive (you may hear a tiny 'beep' a few times), then you probably have a stiction fault. The heads literally stick to the platters and prevent spin up.

You MIGHT be able to get the drive to spin up by warming it a little (NOT HOT). Whilst this may work once, the fault will most likely return when cold again.

These drives also suffer from rubber bumpers that perish, resulting in a sticky, gooey mess. However, this usually results in the drive spinning up but NOT making any re-calibration noises.

However, the drive may have media faults too, given the problems you experienced prior to the major failure.

As the drive is 28 years old I wouldn't be surprised if either, or both, issues you've described happened. I'm going to go with stiction.

I contacted the seller and unfortunately he has already sold the second drive he had up for sale. He's already refunded my money and informed me there's no need to return it. Perhaps I can some how manage to get this one working again. I don't plan to put any important data on it. I'm still wrapping my mind around the fact this is a 80 megabyte drive. At native resolution the three photos I took of the screen and posted would consume 22% of the total capacity of the drive.