Macintosh Portable Hard Drive

[aplmak]

They should be ok... I think... It's probably best if they are level laying flat so the goo doesn't drip down.. I find the goo to pretty much stay put... So it's just opening them up and using a q-tip and removing the goo.. and once I get it all up I use 91% alcohol around the goo reservoir that it dissolved in to clean it up. There is a theory that the battery acid vapor breaks it down.. I actually think it was a particular version.. I found on two that the gasket didn't dissolve.. and it was ones with the "red connor label at the bottom where the serial number label was.. Rather than at the top above the "Apple 40SC" label... So it may be just a particular batch.. Look at the sides of your IDE drives before taking them apart.. You will see the rubber gasket on the sides.. that means it is ok.. If you don't see it and you do see goo.. you need to clean it up.. Be very careful not to touch or get it on the hard drive platter...

 

[uniserver]

i have seen at least (20) Connor 40mb drives in Classic's and LC's and None of them had the gasket ooze.

most of the portable ones have turned to ooze,  and i would like to add to my theory as to maybe the battery vapor causing it wether 9v or 6.8v main battery.

could also be vapor released from the electrolyte boiling off from the bad caps. and there happens to be a group of (3) 47 if's right there.. and a big fat 470uf that i have seen puke its ooze all over too.

to where in the classic and the LC are both ventilated so even if the caps boil out vapor it gets ventilated out asap.

they are only going to boil when the machine is on.

to where the HD in the portable gets to sit there and bask in the vapor. kinda like a dutch oven.

 

[joethezombie]

Mmmm... dutch ovened gasket.  So tasty!

 

[uniserver]

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[techknight]

or it could be storage conditions. God only knows where they were stored over the lats 20+ years. 

 

[trag]

Thanks guys. That's reassuring. Next time I'm near that box I'll open it and see how the gaskets look. There's no telling iF the drives are resting flat or on their sides.

 

[trag]

Was up in the attic tonight looking for box 59 (I number the boxes, keep a written index of what's in each box number) which should be in space U but Isn't and ran across box 30 with the old hard drives in it.

Almost all of them were on their side, not flat. The fifteen or twenty Connor CP2064 drives were all fine the gaskets looked great. Of the dozen, or so, CP2084 drives, three or four had gooey gaskets. There was also a lot more variety in the CP2084 drives in terms of thickness and case details. I suspect there was a poor gasket material used on some drives and not others, not on the CP2064, e.g., and other materials are stable. The drives used in the Portable just seem to have hit the bad gasket material jackpot. It would be nice to identify the gasket materials by name though.