Strange Screws

"Rob B" wrote in message nk.net
"J. Clarke" wrote in message ...
Stan Blazejewski wrote:
snip

Examine that filter carefully and you will find that its primary function is
to filter the tiny amount of air moving through the pressure-equalization
hole and that there is no mechanism by which all or any significant portion
of the air circulating inside the capsule can be made to pass through it.

The 'new' drives I've pulled apart for the magnets seem to have the air
filters as well although I'd expect today's technology to be less tolerant
to dirty air what with the amount of data that they pack into the smaller
space but I still wouldn't expect it to die in "a few days or weeks".

It dies as soon as something hard enough to scratch the platter or head and
small enough to get wedged between them finds its way into that space.

In the real world people have tried this, and the drives typically died in
anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks.

snip

the Math-CS dept at my alma-mater had pretty poster depicting the magnified
size of various particles hair, dust, skin cell and smoke particles next to the
disk heads and the cushion of air that head float on and if i remember correctly

the smoke particle would barely squeeze between the head and platter

So it won't go there in the first place.
The hurricane that rages there will blow it away before it even reaches there.


guessing you were dust lucky with the drive surgery

Pun intended?

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
Rob B wrote:
"J. Clarke" lid wrote in message ...
Stan Blazejewski wrote:
snip

[and snip again]

snip

the Math-CS dept at my alma-mater had pretty poster depicting the
magnified size of various particles hair, dust, skin cell and smoke
particles next to the disk heads and the cushion of air that head float
on and if i remember correctly the smoke particle would barely squeeze
between the head and platter

guessing you were dust lucky with the drive surgery

Not me, the only time I've opened drives either they were already dead or
they were old drives being used as show-and-tells when teaching a class.
Never expected them to actually run afterwards. But if you will google
the archive for this newsgroup I think you'll find some reports from people

who have done this to see how long the drive would run.

Would run opened, continuously all the time.


One thing that is really bad news is fingerprints. I've seen a fingerprint
rip the head off and toss it across the room (somebody decided to power
up a show-and-tell after it had been passed around the classroom).

If it's _thicker_ than the gap and not stuck down and not too massive it
just gets pushed aside.

At low speed, which means it must be in the landing zone.
Anywhere else it is catapulted off the platter long before
the platters reach full speed and before the heads are released.

If it's brittle though it may shatter when it hits the head

It has to hit it first for which it has to be stuck solid and then released
at high velocity and hit the head (small chance) or not released at all and
sitting in the landing zone where forces are less and is swept away at low
speed or is practically glued to the surface somewhere else and even sticks
at full velocity and the head hits it eventually during a seek or R/W.
Now what are the chances of that, (bar finger prints).

and make smaller particles.

Which in that case fly away and end up in the filter.

If it's hard and massive enough then it can chip or deform the head.

A chance of one in millions.

If it's an insect you get ichor on the platter and the result is similar to
fingerprints.

An insect will never make it to the spinning platter.


Bear in mind that that poster dates from the days of
removable disk packs, when drives were _not_ sealed.

Disk packs are still here today (relatively).

Few minicomputers were installed in special rooms and even mainframe shops
generally didn't have laminar-flow positive pressure clean rooms with airlocks.

Nonetheless a standard operation was
for some guy in a suit and tie (if it was a corporate shop) or tie-dyed tee
shirt and jeans and hair down to his ankles (if it was a university shop)
to change disk packs and they ran a good long time despite such treatment.
That's the reason for the posters, to remind people of why that area was
supposed to be kept clean.

And this little anecdote is to show what?

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Odie Ferrous wrote:
"David C. Partridge" wrote:

Hmmmm why do you want to open the case of the drive? If you open it
outside a class 1 clean room, the drive WILL die.

Or are you talking about the drive mounting screws?

Perhaps the drive already *is* dead.

Don't overestimate clean rooms - they contain 100 particles per cubic
meter as opposed to an "average" room containing 600 particles. A
"clean" "average" room will contain far less than the 600 particles.

For what it's worth, I've had a drive running non-stop for over a week
without its cover (platters exposed) and haven't had any hiccups. This
hype about "clean rooms" is a load of drivel.

Interessting.

Arno

"James Sweet" wrote in message news:hLlzf.16289$sq.7248@trnddc01
Folkert Rienstra wrote:
"James Sweet" wrote in message news:rzYyf.15937$h47.10775@trnddc08
mm wrote:
On 16 Jan 2006 08:17:07 -0800, " wrote:
....
I've opened hard drives again and again in very filthy rooms and
they've never shown any ill effects over the days, or in some cases
weeks, that I operated them. I do this all the time with old drives
because I can see what's happening inside the drive while I test my
control circuitry.

If I was manufacturing hundreds of thousands of drives and had to worry
about warranties and customer satisfaction, I'd be doing it in a clean
room. And I would buy a new drive before attempting to repair a damaged
one. But you definitely can operate a hard drive without the cover for
a while; probably long enough to do whatever you want if you don't dawdle.

My drive is clicking, and one important partition has a very bad
directory structure. I'm not sure I can copy over even the good
partitions before it "fails". If I open it, what would I want to do
to stop the clicking, or to keep the clicking syndrome from preventing
me from copying the data to a good drive.


There's nothing you can do by opening it.
If it's clicking that means it's unable to read the disc

due to a hardware failure.

Nonsense.
If it's clicking it means it does a rezero every time it retries a read operation.
It does that on ECC errors and also on CRC errors on the interface.
Neither is necessarily caused by a hardware failure.
Bad power supply, overheated drive or bad data cable can cause this too.


Every single time I've ever had a hard drive clicking it was caused by a
failure of the drive,

So either you have a pathetically inadequate
small sample or you are killing all your drives.

I've never even heard of it

So you obviously should refrain from commen-
ting as if you are the resident expert on this.

caused by those other issues, with the exception being
a couple of early very hot running 10K rpm drives.

As if that can't happen to IDE drives.

Bad drive is 99% the reason.

In your case.
You are known as a 'pathetically inadequate sample'.

Arno Wagner wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Odie Ferrous wrote:

"David C. Partridge" wrote:

Hmmmm why do you want to open the case of the drive? If you open it
outside a class 1 clean room, the drive WILL die.

Or are you talking about the drive mounting screws?


Perhaps the drive already *is* dead.


Don't overestimate clean rooms - they contain 100 particles per cubic
meter as opposed to an "average" room containing 600 particles. A
"clean" "average" room will contain far less than the 600 particles.


For what it's worth, I've had a drive running non-stop for over a week
without its cover (platters exposed) and haven't had any hiccups. This
hype about "clean rooms" is a load of drivel.


Interessting.



Interesting but the drive is running on borrowed time. Perhaps you
should store all your critical data on it and see how long it continues
to operate like that.

"Stephen Lee -- post replies please" wrote in message
According to mm :
(Chris Lewis) wrote:

The clicking is most likely retries (ie: gouged media, weak magnetics).
You _can't_ fix that. You're unlikely to be able to repair even obvious

It only clicks if I try to access the bad partition, and even then not always .
I can read the good partitions, but I'm told the clicking will get worse.

The exact same thing happened to me. I was copying stuff off one of my old
Seagate HDD, and there is one file that XP can't read, saying ECC error. I
ran Seatools http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/ on the drive and it
identified 2 bad sectors with full diagnostic. I was able to get the file
off the drive by having Seatools force a remapping of the bad sectors.

The remapped sectors are zeroed, so you're getting the file damaged, but it
is better than not getting anything at all. The good thing is Seatools
tries to identify and tell you which file is affected (although in short 8.3
name only), so you can decide if you want to risk it or not.

As for whether it will get worse, it depends on what caused the error. If
it was just a transient glitch that caused the drive to make a bad write, it
could be that it will develop no more error afterwards. If, say, the drive
electronics is failing, you'll see more and more bad sectors (thus more
clicking when you access previously-okay files).

HDDs are cheap enough nowadays that I wouldn't risk my data on such a
drive, but YMMV.

Strange how you have no such concerns with risking your data on a new drive
without checking your powersupply/supply of power first.


Stephen

According to mm :
(Chris Lewis) wrote:

The clicking is most likely retries (ie: gouged media, weak magnetics).
You _can't_ fix that. You're unlikely to be able to repair even obvious

It only clicks if I try to access the bad partition, and even then not
always . I can read the good partitions, but I'm told the clicking
will get worse.

The exact same thing happened to me. I was copying stuff off one of my old
Seagate HDD, and there is one file that XP can't read, saying ECC error. I
ran Seatools http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/ on the drive and it
identified 2 bad sectors with full diagnostic. I was able to get the file
off the drive by having Seatools force a remapping of the bad sectors.

The remapped sectors are zeroed, so you're getting the file damaged, but it
is better than not getting anything at all. The good thing is Seatools
tries to identify and tell you which file is affected (although in short 8.3
name only), so you can decide if you want to risk it or not.

As for whether it will get worse, it depends on what caused the error. If
it was just a transient glitch that caused the drive to make a bad write, it
could be that it will develop no more error afterwards. If, say, the drive
electronics is failing, you'll see more and more bad sectors (thus more
clicking when you access previously-okay files). HDDs are cheap enough
nowadays that I wouldn't risk my data on such a drive, but YMMV.

Stephen

The Seagate external hard drives are in a case that holds the
2.5" drive. The case screws are Torx Plus (5 point) and
are available at the site Buffalo Bill showed. The bit size
looks to be an IP6 but don't quote me on that since I haven't gotten
a bit yet.
There are other Torx Plus tools available at the Wiha site he
http://www.wihatools.com/365_IPser.htm

Normal hard drives do use a standard Torx and not the Plus version. I
have opened an old drive just to look inside and if there's any dust
or humidity around it will mess up the platters.
I opened mine to get it going long enough to get some files off of it
myself rather than paying someone else to recover it.

Good luck!