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Date:	Fri, 20 Sep 2002 11:18:10 PST7
From:	"J. R. Fox" <jr_fox@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Re: System Failure

Content Type: text/plain

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Steve Carter wrote:

> It sounds to me like your HD overheated (and might have
> lost its thermal calibration).

Thanks for the reply, Steve. I think your theory is very plausible. The hard drive
(boot drive, first of two) is a very good one, only a couple years old, and has been
completely reliable thus far. It does have a certain periodic (normal) operating
noise that I never noticed on previous drives, which I could only vaguely compare to
the sound of swapper activity, although it really isn't similar at all, and I always
supected that this must be the sound of thermal recal. It is a fairly subtle noise,
so suddenly hearing it repetitiously within a shorter span of time suggested something
not right going on.

> Additional HD cooling is (relatively) inexpensive and could not possibly hurt,
> in any case.

Well, there has been a cooling fan mounted between the two hard drives for as long as
there have been two H/Ds in the system . . . which probably takes us back to '99 or
2000. With the side panel off, I have been sticking my finger in there from time to
time, and this fan is still turning. (The guy who originally built this box did not
believe in saving a few bucks with less than top-grade parts.) But the overall noise
level is such that I probably would not notice if this fan was stopping
intermittently. If I should need to replace it, it looks like one of the H/Ds would
have to come out of its bay for awhile, in order to provide access. Anyway, if your
scenario is what occurred, I hope that nothing got damaged in the course of this.

Some other weird things started happening during this likely heat-related incident,
before the system went down. For example ZTree, which I've had registered for many
years, began telling me that I had xx days left for trial usage.

> Although I've not resorted to HD-specific fans
> (purchased but not installed), I try to leave an inch
> or so around each HD, for air circulation. So far, it's
> been enough. I try to buy 1" drives only, just to
> make sure the extra clearance easier to come by.

The clearance is there, even with the fan, because the fan is using an intervening
drive bay, in lieu of another device. It must have gotten awful damn hot in there.
Good thing I'm not running an AMD ! Wonder why it never happened before this. We've
had plenty other hot days up here, over the last several years. Most components in
this box have gotten replaced with new ones, well before they had a chance to become
problemmatical. The extra fans might be the exception.

Jordan

+++++++++++

> On 9/17/02, Jordan Fox wrote, in part:
> > ... I was several hours into some
> >work when I heard a noise from the hard drive that sounded sort of
> >like repetitious swapper activity (and like it "wasn't quite
> >connecting"), which would be very uncharacteristic. I have 512M of
> >RAM. Then, everything that was running just locked up, and I could
> >not even shut down...

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