The old 340 GByte drives had a nasty tendency to lockup with the read head/arm partially in-between its normal operation and park positions. This happened to me personally; the 1 GByte replacement hasn't exhibited this phenomenon (yet) but plummeting flash prices have found me not using the Microdrive much, either.
You can tell this has happened by the audible and multiple 'clicking' noises the drive makes when you stick it in the slot and it attempts to spin up for the first five or so seconds; it'll eventually give up and you'll get system error messages relating to an inability to access it. There is a way to at least temporarily fix this, and I kid you not......put the drive on a CompactFlash expansion harness or in a PCMCIA adapter, or in some system slot that gives you physical access to its bottom edge, then gently tap on the bottom left corner during the spin-up attempt cycle (if you wait too long, it won't work, you'll need to remove and reinsert the drive then try again). An IBM (then, now Hitachi) marketing VP told me this during a face-to-face meeting at CES a few years back. And it works. You Microdrive users may want to file this away for future reference. It's not a matter of 'if' as much as it's a matter of 'when' ;-) ============================== Brian Dipert Technical Editor: Mass Storage, Memory, Multimedia, PC Core Logic and Peripherals, and Programmable Logic EDN Magazine: http://www.edn.com 5000 V Street Sacramento, CA 95817 (916) 454-5242 (voice), (617) 558-4470 (fax) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit me at http://www.bdipert.com
