HD getting noisy

[evildragon]

My model 25's HD is getting very noisy..

It's like a high pitched "riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing" sound. But, when I touch the drive, it stops.

I've done everything, like take a wadded paper and shoved it in there braced against the model 25's frame and the HD, and while that worked for a bit, it's back.

[Yzzerdd]

Sounds like the bearings are going out. I recommend that you back up your data and start looking for some SCSI hardware.

--Ryan
BTW, as soon as I saw the title of the thread, I said "Oh God no, not the PS/2!" Too bad it was....

[MikeS]

Which drive (20?) and what make/model? Might just be the anti-static strap if it's got one; fairly common with older Seagates. Bad bearing noise is not so likely to disappear if you touch the drive...

m

[evildragon]

It's the IBM 20MB drive.

I have the parrallel port 3GB drive, all my data and Windows is on that drive.. All the internal 20MB does is boot the computer with DOS and load the 3GB HD drivers. I rather that than a boot floppy, so the floppy is always free..

[evildragon]

So I took the system apart and tightend ALL screws on the HD, and it seems to be quiet now..

BUT now another problem happens.. When in Windows, the whole screen jumps and a bunch of corrupted pixels.. It locks up.. WTF!..

[MikeS]

That's what makes these old babies so much fun; as soon as ya touch something in there...

Dirty contacts,loose card or plug somewhere?

Good luck!

m

[evildragon]

I switched it off for a bit, and now it's been on for a good ammount of time without doing it again, it's playing my Jetsons Soundtrack music CD. (yea yea yea, i loved the 80's music from that old movie, always did)

[vwestlife]

Is it a Seagate ST-125L? That's the 3.5" half-height 20 MB drive that came in my PS/2 Model 30-286, using IBM's odd pseudo-IDE-XT interface. (The "L" code isn't even on Seagate's official list of interfaces.) When booting up it does several retries (where the drive recalibrates itself back to track 0), which suggests impending bad sectors, but it isn't any worse than it was 10 years ago.

I considered upgrading to a larger drive, but on these models IBM sure made it difficult: none of the connectors are standard, and the BIOS doesn't include support for AT-type MFM/RLL/IDE/etc. controllers, so I'd have to use an XT-type 8-bit controller with its own BIOS -- and the one I tried (a Seagate ST-11R) couldn't run at anything better than a 6:1 interleave! (The IBM 20 MB drive is 3:1 interleave.)

[evildragon]

I said it's the IBM drive...

And I already have an external 3GB HD.. I only use the internal to boot the system.