An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days
when they were huge, clunky {washing machine}s. 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.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {maximum Maytag mode}{washing machine}]