Stiction

[Bob Bradlee]

Stiction is mostly caused by a breakdown in the lubricant.

Over simplified, oil turns to varnish or tar.

I too have had good luck with a wrist twist to get them spinning again.
and there is a very high likeliness that they will bind up again if allowed to stop and cool down.

I have seen several IDE's have had stiction problems after being shut down for the first time after extended 24/7 use.

I have a maxtor that bound up on me, two days ago,  after 6 years of constant 24/7 server use I shut it down for a long over due 
upgrade. It cooled off while I moved the system to the my cave to work on it and the drive never spun back up.

I knew I should have backed a few things up before I moved it :(

In the past, I opened up an IDE and spun it up by hand. Once it got running, I got the files off of it I needed.
For fun I left it run open on the workbench bench for close to a week before it died.
I had a lot of people come by to see it, and stared in disbelief as the heads sang across the disk when I did a defrag on it.

later
Bob Bradlee

On Fri, 08 Dec 2006 10:43:08 -0800, Marvin Johnston wrote:


>I've read several replies indicating that the drive needs to be taken apart.
>People have also advocated just "hitting" the drive to break the stiction.

>Holding the drive and giving it a quick twist around the spindle axis has always
>worked for me and avoids potential problems with disassembly or damage.

>Has anyone seen stiction on the IDE or later drives? The only stiction I've seen
>has always been on the 5 1/4" MFM/RLL type drives, and probably ESDI/SCSI/SASI
>as well although my experience is limited on those drives.

>Something else I've noticed is that if a drive has stiction, that stiction will
>return after the drive sets for a while again. Anyone know what actually causes
>stiction?