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Concerns about my collection hard drives.

falen5

falen5

6502
Thought id share this one.

as ive been working on rollermanz boards in the last week, ive had to take down several of my machines from the attic to test his boards.

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taken down an se30, performa 200, classic.

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all 3 machines have dead hard drives.!!!!!!!!!

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they were all working when I put them up there in last 1 to 2 years.

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I put each machine in a black plastic bin liner bag then wrapped each one in a blanket or sheet......think they would be safe.

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I know the temperature gets hot in summer and dam cold in winter..............starting to think this is not a good place to keep them

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I opened up one of the drives as I could not find any fault on the outside. Was a quantum prodrive lps. Turns out that the little rubber stop, under the platter , to stop the swing arm hitting the center of the platter had liquifed. got onto the arm and the head and all over the platter.............drive dead.

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techknight put up a video last year of the same disaster.

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so question is.............is it just old age.......or is the attic accelerating the death of my drives.

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would it be better to take down each machine and remove each drive and store them within the house where the temp is more consistant?

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the performa 200 I took down tonight, has the same drive, and the same symptom...........platter wont spin.

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ah man............after all the time I put into these machines this is not good.

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any thoughts people

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thanks

 
I have had same kind of failures.

Hard drives are getting pretty old, if you think of it... some modern Hard drives are prone to fail too.

I use to test my machines from time to time, mainly to avoid this kind of behavior, but is just a matter of time.

 
thanks bibilit.

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looks like there will be a market for a scsi drive replacement ..........there probally already is..........some kind of ssd

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but that clunking, clinking sound of those old drives is part of the experience for me.........im so sad ..id just listen to the drive making noise......love it

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and ssd...........silence.....that's just not right...

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techknight has a video up on such failures.......but the be able to remove the platter safely is a very skilled job........even opening these old drives poses a major risk to the drive

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but god darn it............its such a pity to see these old devices fail.

 
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There already is a ssd replacement, the SCSI2SD :)

If you like the sound of spnning disks you can use morden server grade SCSI drives in old macs (adapters are redily avalible for both 68pin anf 80 pin drives, and i make terminated 80 pin adapters) however those drives still aren't quite the same... they are a lot quiter than the old 50pin counterparts.

I still think it is amazing that these drives have lasted this long.... Just think, with a morden drive you'll be luky to get 5 years, if that, out of the drive...

 
falen5 said:
I put each machine in a black plastic bin liner bag then wrapped each one in a blanket or sheet......think they would be safe.

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I know the temperature gets hot in summer and dam cold in winter..............starting to think this is not a good place to keep them

-

I opened up one of the drives as I could not find any fault on the outside. Was a quantum prodrive lps. Turns out that the little rubber stop, under the platter , to stop the swing arm hitting the center of the platter had liquifed. got onto the arm and the head and all over the platter.............drive dead.
Click to expand...
Natural rubber (latex) under tension has a predictable failure pattern. Drive belts go ping, fall into the works and shrivel up. Little damage is caused and the belt can be replaced. In furniture or car seats, two inch wide straps degrade slowly (sag until your bottom hits the floor) and you can staple a replacement on the old attachments. Old fashioned synthetic rubber behaves in the same way.

Under compression, natural rubber seals dissolve into goo and the transformation occurs quickly. I've seen compressed car body seals change from rubber to mush in a couple of months. The rollers which fail on printers or tape drives tend to be those under compression. Temperature makes a difference so if you can pull all of your hard drives and store  them in a warm room over winter, think about it.

---

What is to be done when all of the old drives have failed? Fake 'em! Install a SCSI or IDE to flash media device inside a hard disk case. Add a teeny weeny sound module to replicate hard disk activity.

Vintage race cars (I apply UK definitions) are allowed to use some modern substitutes for parts that will never be made again. Be honest about what has been done to keep it running.

 
thanks for all your replys lads.

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going to take down all my machines 1 by 1, remove and label every drive, and store them in my man cave here. The temp is more stable.

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I think the best plan is to store them and not use them until I decide to move them on ( if I ever do)

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must get my hands on one of those SCSI2SD thingamajiggys...............and just use one of those for testing.

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thanks folks

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Also there is another problem you all need to be aware of: 

dont store CRTs in violent climate conditions either. Especially moisture ridden. The macs arnt old enough yet, but there will come a time where constant exposure will cause the CRT to fail, the glass-to-pin seal in the back erodes and the CRT will gas out. 

Its a big problem in the 50s/60s TV collecting world. 

Dealing with the rubber issues is not that bad IF its not a multi-platter drive. If it is a multi platter drive, then you have to have a special tool to remove the platter assembly. 

If any platters are allowed to rotate independently of one-another, it will cause cylinder misalignment and the drive is junk, as the servo tracks or data tracks no longer line up. 

 
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You can also run some machines off of a FloppyEMU in HD20 mode. I found it to be the best solution for my Plus & Classic II.

 
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the drive from my performa 200 has died (that's 3 in last week)

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I ended up opening it up(hate having to open them)...it was the high pitch sound that was coming from it

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anyway there are 2 circular scrapes,grooves,scratches on the top platter.

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drive has 2 platters

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the sound I could hear sounded like there was something caught between the head and the platter. So I used a small piece of plastic, about 1.5cm back from the head, to gently lift the head just off the surface. and gave a good blow out

in the hopes there might be some particle caught in there of at the back of the head.

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reassembled , and it is trying to boot from the drive again...with no more high pitch screaming sound.

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it wont boot , so I boot from external drive. When boot complete im told thel scsi need to be initialized.

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I now have Anubis running... it sees the drive.

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I tries a few tests and the drive does some read, write tests, random seek tests etc etc........ it sounds good

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but a few errors come up

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what would be the best course of action from here on............initialize.....format....partition???

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any advice would be a big help here people

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thanks

 
Anubis seems to be the best hard drive program I have found so far. is there a better one...just curious

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looks like I will be doing allot of work on hard drives in next few weeks

 
hey uniserver - great call on the performa sound fix - you were 100% man

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When I had the drive open I checked the rubber under the magnet and the movement of the arm to the spindle. The rubber has not melted and there didn't seem like any sticktion on the movement at all

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then again it poses the question what caused the problem

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do the 2 circle 'scratched' on the platter mean it is dead... of will anibus create a new table of what clusters are good etc etc

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after reading your link...maybey its better to open it up again before I do anything and check again

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one thing I know is that I don't have many chances to save this drive..........

 
my link might help you out with other hd's maybe not this one. its more of a thing to try when you get a stack of 6 or so dead hd's

you might be able to get 2 or 4 to work out of 6, because these old hard drives could just crash as well.  most of the time with hard drives they have a MTBF of about 50,000 hours

that is ran for like 8 years 24 hours a day.

but Max1zzz is really onto something , he sells those SCA to 50 pin adaptors for like 10 bucks each..  and you should be able to find those SEAGATE SAVVIO drives for cheap from times to time,   the 2,5" 10,000 rpm drives of the 36gb and 72 gig size are 100% back wards compatible with 68k macs all the way back to MacII and MacSE, would probably even work with the PLUS if it had termination power.

i bought my drives in 50 and 100 lots and got them at fairly reasonable price.   was installing them in all my mac's… they work so great.  so fast .. so quiet … so cheap…  it makes complete sense to me and my collection anyways.

 
Uniserver - I think the sca to 50 pin is the way. I have 2 SCA drives

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My external drive is a quantum fireball 1.2 gig and I use it as my main store of all the software I have collected since I started collecting macs. And guess what..........when I switch it on its starting to click

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this is a disaster over here..im so dam fed up over it.

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I managed to get the 40 meg from the performa partially revived. I used Anubis to initialize it and then partition it into 2x 20meg drives. Only one succeeded , the other failed and every time I boot it asks to be initialized.

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at least the one that is working has passed all tests (so far) and I have copied over loads of software from the external....well.. 18 meg worth. At least it is booting. But I have no faith in its life expectancy

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is there any  problem with power consumption on these savvio drives when it comes to old macs? - I guess they probably  use less power, and the more I think of it,  the dependability is getting more and more attractive

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will have to get some of these units...even if its for my main storage of all the software ive collected. Then go about replacing all the drives.

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again uniserver....thanks for sharing the info.....

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the plan now is to get these new drives, remove all the old ones and store them...........as it seems trying to keep the old drives working is simply a loosing battle

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Houston..we have a plan!!!!

 
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and the drive was never opened techknight - had to break the seals to open it.

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its booting on the first 20 meg partition.........but id say it will be dead within a few days.

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been looking at the SCA drives...definitely the way to go.

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is this the right adapter

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/NEW-Convert-SCA-80-to-50-68-PIN-ULTRA-SCSI-II-III-LVD-SE-ADAPTER-/351277291439?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item51c9c217af

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am so fed up over these drives failing. Scared to start taking them all down.......

 
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