[TriLUG] Hard drive recovery

[Pat Regan]

Brian Henning wrote:
> For folks who actually still haven't torn open a dead drive to see the
> innards, there's a small (but fairly powerful) magnet which holds the heads
> in parking position when the drive is unpowered.  A small metal tab on the
> positioning assembly makes contact with the magnet when the heads are parked
> and goes *click!*

The magnet aren't so powerful anymore...  Fairly recently, I took apart
an old full height 5.25 inch 500 MB SCSI drive.  The magnet is
GINORMOUS.  I didn't know how to properly disassemble the drive, and it
was very late at night...  And the mechanism on the back of the heads
got stuck against the magnet.  It seems the magnets job is to put
tension on the heads or something, I assume to help steady them.

Well, there is a space between the back of the head mechanism and the
magnet.  I managed to eliminate that space, and I wasn't strong enough
to separate them.  It took 2 screwdrivers and about 20 minutes of prying
and leverage to get them apart :).

The same night I took apart a dead 3.5 inch hard drive.  The magnet
barely sticks to anything compared to the 5.25 full height.

BTW, the 5.25 inch drive had NINE platters.  The heads wrote to both
sides of each platter, except the outer.  The outer platters' inside
surfaces were only used.

Pat
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://www.trilug.org/pipermail/trilug/attachments/20050828/9cff0aa3/attachment.pgp>