On Mon, 23 Oct 1995, Arthur Hoffmann wrote:

> Under AmigaDOS in HDToolBox in the Change Drive Type menu when I press 
> the button that reads the information off the drive I get the 
> manufacturer and drive type information ok, but It comes up with a requester 
> saying "Can't read drive size"
> I then proceeded and entered all the parameters by hand and went to partition the
> drive. When I wanted to save the information it comes back with:
> a requester: "Error 4 on write". The information is not written to the disk.
>
> The drive sits there and blinks about every 7 seconds for about 2 seconds.

This could be one of several things.  1) Media...possibly a scratch or 
possible defect in the area where drive info is written to the disk. 2) A 
head is bad and is unable to write (but the hardware _should_ try another 
head before giving up when it comes to writing information). 3) hardware 
problem (module). 
 
> I checked out the jumpers on the disk and the manual told me that the ss jumper 
> is for a self-seek test:
> Quote form the Quantum Manual:
> 	SS Jumper ON:
> 	self-seek test enabled. The test is initiated when power
> 	is applied to the drive. The test will continue until power is
> 	removed. The drive LED remains on during the test. A
> 	flashing LED indicates a drive error.
> 
> Well I proceeded with the test but the result is noting like described above:
> the drive spins up and the light comes on for a fraction of a second while it is 
> doing that. Then the drive just sits there with the disks running, nothing else 
> happens.

The usual operation for a Quantum drive during spin up is, first the 
lights will flash indicating that the firmware is setting up the drive 
configuration, then i should start to spin up.  When it does, try and 
listen real close and see if you can hear a small *click* and then short 
bursts of sounds.  The initial *click* is a latch that holds an actuator 
in place releasing the actuator to allow it to move freely.  The actuator 
is what holds the heads.  The short bursts of sounds are normal seeks.  
If you hear  neither of these it could be one of several other problems, 
most of which are not fixable.  If the drive is still under warranty in 
this case, I suggest  you take it back.  

Depending on how old it is, the drive information may be stored on the 
module.  It wasn't till fairly recent that they started to write drive 
information to disk in order to save on ROM/RAM on the module itself.

> Does anyone have any idea what happened? And more importantly what I can do to get 
> the drive back to live?

>From wwhat information I can see, it looks like it is a possible hardware 
problem with your module, but there may be other factors that I am not 
aware of to point to something else.

Brian


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