walking drives

2 definitions found

walking drives - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  walking drives
  
     An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the
     days when they were huge, clunky washing machines.  Those
     old dinosaur parts carried terrific angular momentum; the
     combination of a misaligned spindle or worn bearings and
     stick-slip interactions with the floor could cause them to
     "walk" across a room, lurching alternate corners forward a
     couple of millimeters at a time.  There is a legend about a
     drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room
     and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in
     order to get at it!  Walking could also be induced by certain
     patterns of drive access (a fast seek across the whole width
     of the disk, followed by a slow seek in the other direction).
     Some bands of old-time hackers figured out how to induce
     disk-accessing patterns that would do this to particular drive
     models and held disk-drive races.
  
     [Jargon File]
  

walking drives - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  walking drives
   n.
  
     An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days
     when they were huge, clunky washing machines. Those old dinosaur
     parts carried terrific angular momentum; the combination of a
     misaligned spindle or worn bearings and stick-slip interactions with
     the floor could cause them to `walk' across a room, lurching
  alternate
     corners forward a couple of millimeters at a time. There is a legend
     about a drive that walked over to the only door to the computer room
     and jammed it shut; the staff had to cut a hole in the wall in order
     to get at it! Walking could also be induced by certain patterns of
     drive access (a fast seek across the whole width of the disk,
  followed
     by a slow seek in the other direction). Some bands of old-time
  hackers
     figured out how to induce disk-accessing patterns that would do this
     to particular drive models and held disk-drive races.