Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: sjr@datacube.com (Steve J. Rapaport)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Urban legends
Message-ID: <1873@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 9 Apr 88 20:17:26 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Lines: 18
Approved: taylor@hplabs

A while ago in talk.bizarre (I think) there was a series
of urban legends about walking disk drives.  You know, the
Diva-type washing-machine sized multi-platter monsters.  

The legend goes that there is a resonant frequency at which
the drive, if periodically pushed, will rock back and forth
and move around the room.  Resonant frequencies being what
they are, it's possible to write a program that causes the
disk heads to seek at that frequency, and to start the
box rocking, and eventually walking.  Until it walks far enough
to pull out its own plug.  Operators come in in the morning
and find the drive six feet from its original position, its
cord forlornly dragging behind it.  And the room was locked.

Or imagine the horror of being the graveyard shift operator
and having the disk drive suddenly move towards you, methodically
and inexorably, and apparently under its own power....

Steve Rapaport