RE: Running AS/400 with cover off and care of Drives

[Mark Walter <mwalter@xxxxxxxxxx>]

David, 

Although the cover is probably there for a reason, we inadvertently ran with it 
off for about 6 months without incidence. 
About the drives, our model 500 is never off for more than 20 minutes.

Mark


-----Original Message-----
From:   DAVID BULOG [SMTP:d2ba@xtra.co.nz]
Sent:   Friday, June 02, 2000 6:02 AM
To:     MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject:        Running AS/400 with cover off and care of Drives

Hi list,
I was wondering if you can advise me as to whether I should
be running my Model500 with the rounded rear cover on or off.
I could find no specific IBM reference as to what is the correct way but am
I correct in assuming that I should run with the rear cover attached as this
acts as a shield to circulate the air back towards
the cards etc.

Another question is Harddrive care--my model 500 has 18gig total
2 x 6606, 2 x6607, 1x 6713.Are any of these models prone to sticking after
long powerdwn periods.
Since I have the machine at home for the purpose of playing with the project
lightening toolkit I only powerup one day a week for aboubt 4 hours at a
time--How much of a risk Im I taking--I know
Quantem SCSIdrives on PCs are really bad,but IBM drives are
much more reliable(I only use SCSI Ultrastars on my PCs and have
never had a failure--they get a real thrashing to!
What I dont know is how good the AS/400 drives are compared
to the IBM ultrastar PC drives,I have heard a rumor that the AS/400s are top
end Ultrastars with a special logic board??

My friend Andree says you should never
powerdown because spinning the drives does not cause the wear and tear its
the cold starts--in fact he almost guarentied in theory that if you left a
brand new or near new IBM drive in its box for years
it would be useless as the bearings would be stuck--stranglely
enough he has recovered data for clients by carefuly taking apart and
spinning by hand to give a quick start and then transfering the data on to
another drive and throwing the damaged one away

Dave

+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---

+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---