PowerBook 180 hard drive bearing noise

[Quadraflex45]

Hi everyone!

I am 16 years old and I am a proud owner of a mint condition PowerBook 180, it has the port door intact and no signs of the tunnel vision problem and the display is perfect! Everything works perfectly, but one thing that bothers me a little bit is the hard drive is a bit on the noisy side. It has some bearing noise, and I know these old drives are a lot noisier than modern drives, but from others I have heard on YouTube is seems they are a bit quieter than mine. Mine you can barely hear the "clicking" of the drive as it reads data over the bearing whine, and it's pretty loud in my room. The drive works great though. Others I have heard you can hear the drive reading data and can barely hear any bearing noise. Is there a way to lubricate these old drives? Mine is a 70MB drive. 

I have not opened up the machine so I don't know what drive is inside it. If anyone has another working 2.5" SCSI drive that is quieter I could use a spare one too in case this one ever dies, as it's the only one I have, and I want to prolong the life of the drive if possible. 

 

[MOS8_030]

Howdy! Welcome!

The drive may quiet down slightly with use...or it may get louder before it fails.

Just no way to predict, and really not much you can do about it.

The problem with replacement Powerbook SCSI drives is they're all ~25 years old and will be subject to failure.

Imho, the cheapest most reliable option, should your drive fail, is to go solid state with a SCSI2SD PowerBook Edition adapter.