Vintage HD Sticky(solution)(lazymans), 40mb / 80mb / 160mb Quantum ProDrive ELS

[uniserver]

OK so my working CRUDE solution is this.

I have a pile of these things so I wanted to come up with something… anything, is better then them not working at all.

take the lid off the hd.



then have a look at the plater if it looks pretty good, no scratches or gouges 

there is a good chance the head is just sticking to its rubber bumper under the platter.

the rubber bumper under the plater turns to goo. ( for what ever reasons )

and can cause 2 things… 

1 - the head to stick to it and not move. causing the hd to spin up and then spin down.

2 - causes the head to smack into the spindle on power down.

first thing i do is tilt the hd on its side and use acetone to partially dissolve the bumper.

right after i put the acetone in there i work the head back and forth till i feel that there is no longer any resistance.



Next take the top magnet off



Get a piece of rubber that you can cut to size.



install the rubber, size should allow the head to stop about 1/4 of an inch from the spindle on power down.





couple things… the rubber i used will really not need glue because its thick enough to

get sandwich between bottom and upper magnet. But i put some goop on there

just to hold it in place anyways.

at this point put the top magnet back on… and power it up and see if it works… it should!

if not.. well then i guess it was worth a try.

The other way to fix this is to remove the head .. and the platter and replace the rubber o ring under the plattter.

I'v just not had any success doing that. This crap is just too delicate.

doing it this way i now have 2 working drives.

Not a bad way to spend your sunday.

Also try to not get any finger prints or anything on the plater… do not drop anything on the plater

use a can of air to blow the platter off when you are done… blow off any little hairs.. dust … 

if you did touch the platter.. use ISP and some quips to get that finger print off, before you power it up.

its always good to get some of these bottles so you can more accurately apply your Flux / ISP / Acetone ( when needed )

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Two-1-OZ-bottles-with-stainless-steel-needle-tip-dispenser-for-Flux-/111004315495?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19d85f6f67

 

[techknight]

you absolutely positively CANNOT REMOVE the platters from a multiplatter drive without a special compression tool! 

if its a single platter, your ok. I disassembled my 80MB all the way removing the platter and fixing it. its rocking in my classic right now. 

Also when you remove the headstack, you must make a jig to hold and keep the two heads apart when sliding them off the platter. you CANNOT let them touch EVER! it can knock one, or the other head slightly out of alignment with one another. this will cause a cylinder mis-alignment and the drive will never function again. 

 

[uniserver]

I hear ya… I'm not going to remove any platters or heads period!

Or we can all just send our single platter drives to you to fix?

50 bucks a drive?

U the man

 

[techknight]

my other 80MB drive the head stuck to the platter. 

I tried to free it and ended up pulling the head, which trashes it. So whoops. I still had data on that drive. 

So I had to remove the heads from my other one AGAIN and over to this one so I could get the shit off of it. 

So I reassembled, and the motor quit spinning. so I was like WTF then. I swapped over the drive mainboard, and everything was fine again. So well i guess not all is lost. 

 

[uniserver]

Whoops,  IPA not ISP. 

 

[wilykat]

Taking hard drive apart in any room that isn't 100% dust free is a bit risky. A speck of dust can slip in unseen and a few days or a few years down the road, the dust can work its way to the head and render it unable to read or you might get something like dirt that can scratch the platter.

This trick shouldn't be used freely, best reserve it for disk whose head is stuck and you absolutely need to get data off the drive. Then make copy of all the data and try not to use the hard drive for critical stuff.

 

[uniserver]

i was thinking more on the lines of maybe get a little use from it before you use it for target practice.

i am up to 5 drives now working. btw

this last one quantum 230 meg, a little different but still made a little custom bumper.

this one had some data issues, i am going to format it a few times and see how it holds up.

View attachment 4480

 

[uniserver]

 

[Juror22]

That is so cool!  I have to give that a go.

 

[max1zzz]

I'll also add that I have handsome limited sucess doing this with dead conner 2.5" hdd's (one 40mb worked with it, one 40mb worked when I was manually pushing the arm out, but quit working as soon as I tried this, and a 20mb one died when I accidentally pushed the heads into the platter with the drive on.)

But hey, none worked when I got them, so one working out of three isn't bad

 

[CelGen]

I"m too paranoid with taking the tops off hard drives. At least run a surface scan or a full format after you do this to make sure there's no physical contamination remaining on the drive and all sectors have remained healthy.

 

[Elfen]

This is an interesting fix. At least it will get your drive alive long enough to recover what you got on it.

Idea - Universer, what you think of this - using a mechanical pencil eraser cut down to proper height and glued into place?