Having issues with 20HD sticking.

[King_Corduroy]

Hello all! I'm new here, been collecting vintage computers for a long time (Since 2008) but for some reason it took me till just last year to get into 68k Macs. lol
Anyway, I just bought a 1986 Macintosh Plus and I've got it repaired and running, even managed to unstick the 20HD external drive. The only issue is that I'm not 100% sure this drive is working correctly, there's a lot of folders named "Unnamed" which is concerning and I have to unstick it every time I want to use the machine. I know people will say "Oh just use a bluescsi and ditch that" but honestly I'd like to either keep using it or use something like an internal Bluescsi to replace the HDD in it. Does anyone know if that's possible or what I could do to make this external drive more reliable?

Loving this computer so far even though it's leagues slower than my Classic II so hopefully someone can help.

 

[Byrd]

Nice setup, doing the same with a 20SC and 5.25” Seagate ST-225N now. Unscrew the drive and lubricate the bearing from the underside with sewing machine oil. Also check PSU voltages while there and recap if needed.

The errors - dunno, maybe boot and run First Aid or early version of Norton Disk Utilities on it. Ultimately it may need a low level format and start fresh.

 

[King_Corduroy]

Nice setup, doing the same with a 20SC and 5.25” Seagate ST-225N now. Unscrew the drive and lubricate the bearing from the underside with sewing machine oil. Also check PSU voltages while there and recap if needed.

The errors - dunno, maybe boot and run First Aid or early version of Norton Disk Utilities on it. Ultimately it may need a low level format and start fresh.

Thank you! When you say bearing though do you mean the bearing on the box on the underside I assume to be the stepper motor? I tried putting some light machine oil on there but no difference sadly as of yet.

 

[Byrd]

Yes, on the underside of the stepper motor, and left overnight. Mine needed a few drops of oil. Apart from that I'm yet to open mine to see further head stuck/read damage as it is now detected but can't boot or mount. I suspect next step is a low level format using something like Lido over Apple HDSC utility.