[OpenIndiana-discuss] Alarming power up (disk failure)

[Reginald Beardsley]

FWIW

Not strictly on topic, but I hope will prove useful to someone.  I can find no information w/ google about this.  I thought I'd post it here since the Z400 is one of the few systems available certified for Solaris 10 & 11.

My Z400 was powered down last night because of a power failure.  Normally it runs 24x7. When I went to power it up this morning I was confronted w/ a very loud alarm which started the instant that power was applied.  Quite unlike anything I've ever heard before. Accompanying this was flashing of the power LED on one of the root pool drives which is in a removable tray.  The BIOS setup utility gave no indication of the fault.

Removing the disk sled and rotating it quickly back and forth about the spindle axis cleared the problem.  I had similar issues (but no alarm) w/ a SCSI disk in my DEC Alpha 8-10 years ago.  Any time I shut that system down long enough for it to cool off, the spindle grease got stiff enough prevent the disk spinning up. Rotating the housing allows the inertia of the platters to break the bearing loose.  

Apparently the Z400 detects the fault and sounds an alarm, but I could not find any documentation to that effect. In the case of the Alpha, I ran that disk for many years after the problem appeared and suspect that the disk is still in the system.

So if your disk doesn't spin up during a cold boot, don't despair. There's a high probability that it still works. Obviously this can be a real nuisance if you power down frequently long enough for the system to cool off.

Have Fun!
Reg