[OT] Useable BIOS RAID 1 on the cheap?

[Jacqui Caren]

John Costello wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2006, Jacqui Caren wrote:
> 
>>John Costello wrote:
>>
>>>halt when you power them off.  $WORK had a longish enforced shutdown (10
>>>days).  The day after the shutdown, a higher-than-normal number of people 
>>
>>Even nastier - over heated disk bearings after very long run periods
>>have been know to "seize". This is not to say that the platter no longer
>>turns, but that starting friction is too great and the drive pulls too
>>much juice or simply gives up. Sun pizza boxes were notorious for this
>>when 2 drives were installed - the upper drive would overheat due to
>>the lower drive and within a year of so they would fail to reboot
>>to die "screaming" (worn bearings do scream)
> 
> 
> There was a series of SCSI drives used in Apple systems, 7100s or 8100s I 
> think, that had a fatal flaw.  The bearings would grind down over time, 
> but not crash the system.  When the drive was powered down, the bearings 
> would stick and the drive could not spin up.  The solution (demonstrated 
> to me by my boss) was to remove the drive, tap it three or four times, and 
> replace it.  The drive would spin up when powered up, and you had your 
> chance to migrate the data.

I remember hearing this from someone a while back :-)

In our case , procedure went - call sun support - PFY pops up - he
replaces drive FOC and disappears with a popping noise - If we are
unlucky, we lose data and have to restore from weekly L0 + nightly 
incrementals :-(

>>Taking a poll - do people here leave (home/desk) machines running 24x7 
>>or do they power down when done for the day.
> 
> 
> Personal laptop: Stays on unless I travel.
> Home desktops:  Off unless I am using them.
> Work laptops:  No pattern--sometimes on, sometimes off.

Ta - not what I would have expected but nice to know.

Jacqui