Do hard drives fail from open covers?

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seleth.bluefeathertech.com

sci.electronics.repair:417702

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Exactly. But in the reply before yours, Dr. Anton T. Squeegee actually disputes that.

Go figure. Lots of shooting from the hip going on.

Yes I did, and I agree with that. But that's not what I was replying to and that is why I asked plainly.

Didn't you notice that the author you are replying to is John Doe?

Nope.

Apparently, consumer demand for greater capacity does not figure into your equation. In fact, demand for greater capacity increases.

The only one I have taken apart, over five years ago, had a single platter.

Why do you have to see? All you have to do is look at the maker's web site.

Nowadays they have that many for typical consumer sized drives. Just look at a maker's web site.

You are ignoring other factors.

... consumers want greater capacity, multiple platters increases capacity

... the electronics is always much faster than the hardware, so multiple platters means faster data transfer

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sci.electronics.repair:417743

Thanks.

Here is some further reading, for what it's worth.

"These [pre/early-IDE] drives also did not support sector translation, in which the physical parameters could be altered to appear as any set of logical cylinders, heads, and sectors."

Finding a room that is truly dust free is a BIG challenge. If you had a true clean room, then you may have been clean, but most hard drives which have been in use for any amount of time will have accumulated a significant amount of dust on them. Just the process of opening such a drive in a clean room would have contaminated the room.

One can occasionally get away with opening a drive. I've done it, and I know others who have, but I would only do it with a drive which was already considered scrap or worthless, or, as a last resort, to try to get the platters spinning to copy the data off a hard drive that wouldn't start without help.

Anything else is just another form of Russian Roulette, with one empty chamber.

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----------------------------------------------- Jim Adney snipped-for-privacy@vwtype3.org Madison, WI 53711 USA

-----------------------------------------------

Hang out in the homebuilt PC group for a while and listen to all of the sad stories people come and tell us about losing all of the critical information on their hard disk drive because recovery is going to cost USD1000. I'm not sure why they go there, but they do. Their crying is a very good teacher.

A backup hard disk drive is dirt cheap. And it takes a few minutes to do the backup.

Because you don't realize the cost of going without backups.

Sounds like something you and your boss should be discussing.

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GMT)

sci.electronics.repair:417804

>

Yup same here - the 40GB Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 8. We've had literally hundreds of them go south within the warranty period. Failure rate compared to drives we've sold indicates >%7 failure rate.

What a dog.

In that case, just use a second raid for the backup. For mere mortals, a DVD-writer is indeed a cheap way to make backups.

--
Met vriendelijke groet,

   Maarten Bakker.

Yup.

--
Sorry.
Rich

Well, you're obviously an idiot. That is, if you're talking about opening the lid of the drive itself. If you're talking about opening the lid of the shipping container, then I don't even know what you're talking about.

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Thanks!
Rich

You mean you've never seen a Control Data Fixed Module Drive? Two Spindles, each supporting a pack of ten, 14" aluminum disks, total capacity, 300 MegaBytes per pack.

Cheers! Rich

Then your brain is broken. If you can provide storage to your customers at, say, $.10 per megabyte, doesn't it stand to reason that if you could provide those megabytes on _one_ platter, that the machinery would be cheaper than using _two_ platters for the same data per drive?

Thanks, Rich

Unfortunately, I neglected to collect one of those diagrams when I worked at CDC MPI. But, yeah, the heads flew at

50 microinches - they tested their flying height by looking at the interference fringes with a monochromatic lamp and glass disk.

And they had, "flying height, smoke particle, dust particle, human hair" and, yes, a human hair is about 3000 microinches.

Well, Ida know. It was 0.000050 back then - what are they flying them at these days? I thought that was the thickness of the boundary layer!

Thanks, Rich

My favorite tech support call wasn't computerz, but it waz electronicz. ;-)

I was a video game repair tech. (also jukeboxes, pinball machines, pool tables, Foosball tables, Wak-A-Mole machines, etc, etc, etc...) And I did phone support when a guy has a game in his own shop, but doesn't have a tech. [C == customer, M == me] C: Uh, hi. The machine don't power up. M: OK. Is it plugged in? C: Yup. M: Did you check the fuse? C: Yup. M: Do you have volts at the fuse? C: Uh, no. M: Do you have volts at the power switch? C: Uh, lemme go check that... [background - sound of game powering up and self-testing] C: Guh-Hyuk! Uh fiyuxed it! An' Uh ain't even a-gonna tell ya whut uh diyud!

--
Cheers!
Rich

Of course, but do they really wipe their ass with squirrels?

-- Cheers! Rich ------ "An angst-ridden amorist, Fred, Saw sartorial changes ahead. His mind kept on ringing With fishy girls singing; Soft fruit also filled him with dread." -- J. Walker, "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Dewd! Did you see that movie too?

"Five!" "oeryhtuopve?" "Five!!!!!" "oiutnubnio!!!!" "*POW* *POW* *POW* *POW* *POW*"

--
Cheers!
Rich

I don't recall the cost of the packs, but the drives were about $45K in

1987 dollars.