OT - Disk Drive(s)

["Chuck Lewis" <clewis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

OK, this is off topic, but anyone who ever spent time "tapping" on IBM disk
drives to get them to fire up, can relate to this !

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                  COMPUTERWORLD DAILY SHARK
                      April 2, 2002
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Shark Tank: That's what it's all about

Wet-behind-the-ears sysadmin pilot fish spends a long day upgrading a
Unix server. Then he carefully shuts down and powers-off the server.

Next morning, fish comes in, flips the server's power switch, and ...
nothing happens. No familiar whine from the root disk drive, no start-
up messages on the server's monitor. Nada.

After several futile minutes of power-cycling the server, fish is
getting frantic and users are screaming at him to get the server back up.

So fish calls his favorite sysadmin wizard and lays out the situation.

"Oh, yeah," the wizard says. "I know the problem. Do exactly as I say:
Power it off, take the monitor off the top of the server and then
unscrew all the cables."

Fish quickly follows the directions.

"Now pick up the server," wizard tells him, "hold it over your head,
and do the hokeypokey."

"What?" says fish.

"Do the hokeypokey," says wizard.

"Um ... what is the hokeypokey?" fish asks.

"You know, dance around like a jerk while twisting your body," wizard
says.

So fish puts down the phone, picks up the server and dances around the
IT shop like crazy for a minute or so. Then he reconnects all the
cables and pushes the power switch -- and the disk drive powers up with
its familiar whine.

"What happened?" astonished fish asks wizard.

"The spindle in those @#$%! drives sometimes sticks when you power
them down for awhile," says wizard. "The hokeypokey just shakes them
loose."


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