After yesterday’s fun with the hard drives, I figured it was probably a heat problem, so I unplugged the two other drives and left them to cool down overnight. I put them in this afternoon, and the 80Gb hdc drive worked fine. But the 40Gb hdb drive didn’t.
Actually, the 40Gb drive was making a sound that sounded sort of like the system beep on my old DEC Alpha UDB, only repeated over and over. I once described the system beep of the UDB as sounding like a duck trying to outhonk a Mac truck, and then flying into the grill of said truck.
The BIOS wouldn’t recognize the drive. I put it in another machine, and the same problem. I tried it as a master and as a slave, and no dice. I went to my junk shelf, and there was a second 40Gb IBM Deathstar^WDeskstar that I don’t remember putting it there. So I plugged it in, and it didn’t work either. But at least it wasn’t making that horrible noise.
The drive that just died says it’s from 2000, and the one that was sitting on my shelf was from 2001. I think I’d better see if they’re under warranty.