how to lubricate noisy hard drive?
g liu
head, which i supose i can do nothing to prevent, but also it makes
much noise when spinning. it is much louder than the fan, and my other
disk drives.
would lubricating it somehow make it quieter?
where whould i put the lubrication anyway?
is motor oil fine?
gwoho liu.
g liu
>gw...@nntp-server.caltech.edu (g liu) writes:
>>would lubricating it somehow make it quieter?
>Yeah, in a way it would...
>>where whould i put the lubrication anyway?
>Well, you need to take off the outer casing, and lube the internal
>components. Especially the platters themselves, since you don't want
>the read/write head scraping against the platter.
>>is motor oil fine?
>I find that Quaker State 10W-30 works best.
>MD
>--
>-- Michael P. Deignan / Since I *OWN* SBS.COM,
>-- Domain: m...@anomaly.sbs.com / These Opinions Generally
>-- UUCP: ...!uunet!rayssd!anomaly!mpd / Represent The Opinions Of
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i tried removing the casing and squirting motor oil on the platters and
other parts. the oil was in one of those brass oil cans, so i dont know
what brand it was or what viscosity.
the problem i have now is that the drive does not seem to work right
anymore. when i turn on the computer, it spins, and is not as noisy
as it was before, but the computer does not boot anymore.
when i first tried the drive after oiling it, it sprayed the oil all over
the place (i did not put the cover on until after trying it out),
and some got on the circuit board. could the oil have harmed
the curcuit board?
could it be that i used the wrong viscosity?
how would i fix such a disk drive? is there any way to recover the data
on the drive?
i thank you in advance for any help.
gwoho liu
Michael P. Deignan
>would lubricating it somehow make it quieter?
Yeah, in a way it would...
>where whould i put the lubrication anyway?
Well, you need to take off the outer casing, and lube the internal
n liu
>m...@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>>gw...@nntp-server.caltech.edu (g liu) writes:
>>>would lubricating it somehow make it quieter?
>>Yeah, in a way it would...
....
>>>is motor oil fine?
>>I find that Quaker State 10W-30 works best.
>i tried removing the casing and squirting motor oil on the platters and
>other parts. the oil was in one of those brass oil cans, so i dont know
>what brand it was or what viscosity.
>the problem i have now is that the drive does not seem to work right
>anymore. when i turn on the computer, it spins, and is not as noisy
>as it was before, but the computer does not boot anymore.
>when i first tried the drive after oiling it, it sprayed the oil all over
>the place (i did not put the cover on until after trying it out),
>and some got on the circuit board. could the oil have harmed
>the curcuit board?
>could it be that i used the wrong viscosity?
>how would i fix such a disk drive? is there any way to recover the data
>on the drive?
Ah. I think i see the problem now. What you SHOULD have used was not
10W-30 right out of the can. Clearly, you must use oil drained from the
pan of the car (Pre-used oil has better lubing properties, since the
oil has had a chance to mix around inside the engine under extreme heat).
Now you have to carb-cleaner the entire thing (Gunk's is the best for this)
and soak the platters in molten paraffin. This will help the heads read
the information with fewer read errors. A green magic marker around the
edge of the platter will help tracking as well. Now, go ahead and reapply
the broken-in oil (again, 10 weight is best). The blacker the oil is,
the better, since clear oil is a sure sign that it has not been broken in
properly. Now, drop the thing off a 9-story building (10 is too many).
This should boot fine now. (Steel tipped only).
Good luck, and happy hunting!
nye
Tom Armistead
Come on guys - someone may actually be taking this stuff to heart???
I had someone I work with tell me that he read this junk here. He was
SERIOUSLY asking me if I had star-head screw driver to take his hard drive
apart with? Really!!! 8-()
DON'T EVER TAKE YOUR HARD DRIVE APART!!!
Tom
--
Tom Armistead - Software Services - 2918 Dukeswood Dr. - Garland, Tx 75040
===========================================================================
to...@swsrv1.cirr.com {egsner,letni,ozdaltx,void}!swsrv1!toma
Doug McDonald
In article <1991May20....@swsrv1.cirr.com> to...@swsrv1.cirr.com (Tom Armistead) writes:
>I had someone I work with tell me that he read this junk here. He was
>SERIOUSLY asking me if I had star-head screw driver to take his hard drive
>apart with? Really!!! 8-()
>
>DON'T EVER TAKE YOUR HARD DRIVE APART!!!
>
BULLSHIT!! There are good reasons to take hard drives apart. I'm going to
take apart the hard drive from an original IBM PC-AT, take the platter and
machine a knife edge on at, and throw it at the neck of the next IBM
salescritter I run across!!
:-) :-)
Those of you with these drives know exactly what I mean. You also know
that these things have already been taken apart enough times the screws may
be stripped.
Doug McDonald
Stephen M Smith
>m...@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>>gw...@nntp-server.caltech.edu (g liu) writes:
>>>would lubricating it somehow make it quieter?
>>Yeah, in a way it would...
>>>where whould i put the lubrication anyway?
>>Well, you need to take off the outer casing, and lube the internal
>>components. Especially the platters themselves, since you don't want
>>the read/write head scraping against the platter.
>>>is motor oil fine?
>>I find that Quaker State 10W-30 works best.
>
>the problem i have now is that the drive does not seem to work right
I tried this fellows advice too. I'm a novice at this sort
of stuff, so I'm not sure if I did something wrong. I'm
having the same problems.
Please post replies as they might be useful for others. Thanks!
SS
RAMontante
| >>Well, you need to take off the outer casing, and lube the internal
| >>components. Especially the platters themselves, since you don't want
| >>the read/write head scraping against the platter.
| >>>is motor oil fine?
| >>I find that Quaker State 10W-30 works best.
| gw...@nntp-server.caltech.edu (g liu) writes:
| >i tried removing the casing and squirting motor oil on the platters and
| >other parts...
| >the problem i have now is that the drive does not seem to work right
| >anymore...
Silly people -- the March Hare and the Mad Hatter tried this approach
with a timepiece and it didn't work, even though they used *the very
best* butter!
All those moving parts are the technology of a past generation anyway.
What you want is a Solid-State drive! Fortunately, you can convert
your drive to solid-state quite cheaply.
Just mix up about 100 cc's of epoxy (the two-part kind) and apply it
liberally to the ends of the shaft (runs through that shiny frisbee-
shaped thing) and the read-write head armature (the hand-like thing that
grabs at the frisbee disc). Apply all excess epoxy to anything that
looks like it might move. Give it 24 hours to set up, and you'll have
a solid-state (very) hard disk drive! Just as solid state as those
RAM drives, and you don't need any software!
Paul Hutmacher
> my hard drive is quite noisy.
They get that way after awhile.
> would lubricating it somehow make it quieter?
Possibly.
> where whould i put the lubrication anyway?
That's the problem. Where would you put it?
> is motor oil fine?
I doubt it.
Have you tried calling the hard drive manufacturer? I'd be leary (sorry Tim ;)
of opening up a sealed device. Hard drives are manufactured to specific
tolerances and some can crash a head if a hair gets between the head and the
media. Do you have a clean room to take this thing apart in?
I'd leave it alone and consider calling the manufacturer and also saving for a
new one. All hard drives fail; it's only a matter of when.
Paul Hutmacher | "Just like Rome we fell asleep when we got spoiled.
pa...@xcluud.sccsi.com | Ignore human rights in the rest of the world ya
uunet!nuchat!xcluud!paul | might just lose your own." -- Jello Biafra & DOA
mr w.j. ho
>gw...@nntp-server.caltech.edu (g liu) writes:
>> my hard drive is quite noisy.
>They get that way after awhile.
Yes, I agree but sometimes the noise is a bit too much.
>> would lubricating it somehow make it quieter?
>Possibly.
I guess it is safer to bear with this noise. I've only tried lubricating
the bearings when a hard disk have difficulty to start-up after being turn-off.
>> where whould i put the lubrication anyway?
>That's the problem. Where would you put it?
I've a few old Seagate ST251 and ST225. I lubricated them by putting
lubricant on the spindle which is exposed partially at the side where the
anti-static contact strip is.
I have problem with newer hard disk. Most of their bearings are inaccessible.
Any experience from anybody?
>> is motor oil fine?
>I doubt it.
Never lubricate an electrical motor or electrical appliances with motor
oil. Use some good electrical quality lubricant ( usually Si-based ).
--
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Wey Jing Ho Tel: 61-3-5732567 E-mail : sci...@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au ^
^ Physics Dept., Monash University ( Caulfield Campus ), Melbourne, AUSTRALIA ^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Bill Huffman
>| >m...@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>| >>Well, you need to take off the outer casing, and lube the internal
>| >>components. Especially the platters themselves, since you don't want
>| >>the read/write head scraping against the platter.
>| >>>is motor oil fine?
>| >>I find that Quaker State 10W-30 works best.
>
>| gw...@nntp-server.caltech.edu (g liu) writes:
>| >i tried removing the casing and squirting motor oil on the platters and
>| >other parts...
>| >the problem i have now is that the drive does not seem to work right
>| >anymore...
>All those moving parts are the technology of a past generation anyway.
>What you want is a Solid-State drive! Fortunately, you can convert
>your drive to solid-state quite cheaply.
>Just mix up about 100 cc's of epoxy (the two-part kind) and apply it
>liberally to the ends of the shaft (runs through that shiny frisbee-
>shaped thing) and the read-write head armature (the hand-like thing that
>grabs at the frisbee disc). Apply all excess epoxy to anything that
>looks like it might move. Give it 24 hours to set up, and you'll have
>a solid-state (very) hard disk drive! Just as solid state as those
>RAM drives, and you don't need any software!
These are all very (interesting?) suggestions. However, there may be some
novices that might read your suggestions and be lead astray. I am, of
course, talking about backing up your data first. Before opening your
computer it is a good idea to make sure that you have fresh backups.
When doing backups you should use compression. This will squeeze more data
onto your disks, save disk space, and money. The best way to compress
your data is: find the data line to the drive to receive the compressed
data. While data is being transferred over the data line,
squeeze it very tightly. This will make the 1's and 0's smaller thereby
allowing more to fit on your media. I have found that vise grips work
very well for this. The larger and tighter the vise grips the better the
compression ratio will be. This will allow much more data to be stored on
your disks.
Some problems to watch out for are: If you don't seem to be getting an
acceptable compression ratio (1.5 to 2.0), and you are using the largest
vise grips made, then maybe you are squeezing the line horizontally.
Vertical recording seems to work much better. If your data transfers seem
to be taking longer then, maybe you put a kink in the line. A kink can
make the electical current flow into an eddy. This eddy will almost always
slow down the current. If you run into any other problems then, please let
me know.
mr k.l. lentin
I LOVE IT! What a great suggestion. There is of course an alternative to all
this gluey epoxy, lets open ou drive and smear honey on the platters method
of drive repaird. I find a much better way is to open the drive (thus letting
in dust which makes the heads scrape little lines on the platters which makes
nice little places for the binary 1's to lie in. Then take a big hammer and
hit the exact centre of the round thingy bit (you must hit dead centre or you
might do some damage :-)
Then Fill the whole drive with epoxy resin to keep all the pieces together and
re seal the drive to its original 100% air tight, dust proof conditions.
There is no need to back up or compress beacuse this method can not fail.
[On a serios note, I actually have a Seagate ST251, 42meg drive, that for some
reason after being off over night will not start up again. (well it works fine
at the repairers but not at home :-). If I take it and shake it around a lot
it will start up. Only problem is to get to the drive I have to remove a non
flip top cover, take out two floppies and another hard drive and the
controller to get to the screws, then put it all toghether when i've got it
going. - Maybe I should try fix it as described :-)]
|/
|\evin
Steve -Social Hacker
In article <1991May21.1...@donner.SanDiego.NCR.COM> huf...@tortuga.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Bill Huffman) writes:
>In article <1991May20.1...@news.cs.indiana.edu> bob...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) writes:
>>| >m...@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:
>>| >>Well, you need to take off the outer casing, and lube the internal
>>| >>components. Especially the platters themselves, since you don't want
>>| >>the read/write head scraping against the platter.
>
>
>>All those moving parts are the technology of a past generation anyway.
>>What you want is a Solid-State drive! Fortunately, you can convert
>>your drive to solid-state quite cheaply.
>
>>Just mix up about 100 cc's of epoxy (the two-part kind) and apply it
>>liberally to the ends of the shaft (runs through that shiny frisbee-
>
>These are all very (interesting?) suggestions. However, there may be some
>novices that might read your suggestions and be lead astray. I am, of
>squeeze it very tightly. This will make the 1's and 0's smaller thereby
>allowing more to fit on your media. I have found that vise grips work
>very well for this. The larger and tighter the vise grips the better the
>compression ratio will be. This will allow much more data to be stored on
[..]
I LOVE IT! What a great suggestion. There is of course an alternative to all
this gluey epoxy, lets open ou drive and smear honey on the platters method
of drive repaird. I find a much better way is to open the drive (thus letting
in dust which makes the heads scrape little lines on the platters which makes
nice little places for the binary 1's to lie in. Then take a big hammer and
hit the exact centre of the round thingy bit (you must hit dead centre or you
might do some damage :-)
Then Fill the whole drive with epoxy resin to keep all the pieces together and
re seal the drive to its original 100% air tight, dust proof conditions.
There is no need to back up or compress beacuse this method can not fail.
[..]
|/
|\evin
----
I hope nobody is taking these suggestions seriously! If they are,
they are opening their hard drives up to the possibility of...
VIRUSES!
Yes, there is a reason that those things are put together in a
clean-room. While it is true that the binary 1's fit nicely in the
fine scratches, you never can be sure what kind of dust was resposible
for those convenient grooves.
I personally recommend making the grooves manually with, say, an
X-acto knife. If you make them deep enough, the heads may rest
confortably in them and never need to move to another track. This, of
course, reduces the time wasted by chirping all over the place.
-
Damn, there goes my patent application for clip-on data compression.
Super Tip:
I was experimenting with said forms of data compression on the big,
colorful wires going into the drive. I was making a lot of progress
towards reduced power consumption (for laptops, of course), when I
stumbled accross a totally unrelated discovery.
I pressed to hard on the clamp and snipped the wire in two. The
effect? A drastic reduction in that awful whirring noise that comes
with hard disks! Updates and analysis to come as soon as I fix my
boot problem.
-Steve
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
--
}>> Steve Haehnichen <<{
shaeh...@ucsd.edu Disclaimer: UCSD and I do not share any opinions.
Ron Craig
PAUL>gw...@nntp-server.caltech.edu (g liu) writes:
GLIU> my hard drive is quite noisy. would lubricating it somehow make it
GLIU> quieter?
PAUL>They get that way after awhile. Possibly.
GLIU> where whould i put the lubrication anyway? is motor oil fine?
PAUL>That's the problem. Where would you put it? I doubt it.
PAUL>Have you tried calling the hard drive manufacturer? I'd be leary
PAUL>(sorry Tim ;) of opening up a sealed device.
PAUL>I'd leave it alone and consider calling the manufacturer and also saving
PAUL>for a new one. All hard drives fail; it's only a matter of when.
Visually inspect the drive. If there is a spindle coming out of the top,
it should have a metal contact against the spindle for a ground. If this
has worn a tiny groove in the spindle, it may be causing the noise.
IF YOU WANT, you COULD GENTLY bend the contact SLIGHTLY so it no longer
rides in this groove. The noise will stop until another groove is worn
into the spindle (quite a while in the future). BE CAREFUL NOT TO BREAK
the contact. USE THIS INFO at your own PERIL.
--
Ron Craig inet- cr...@med.unc.edu
CB# 8180 - UNC Chapel Hill bitnet- URO...@UNC.BITNET AT&T- (919) 966-3681
Chapel Hill NC 27599-8180 My opinions are valued by UNC, not shared by them.
Paul Hutmacher
> [On a serios note, I actually have a Seagate ST251, 42meg drive, that for som
> reason after being off over night will not start up again. (well it works fin
> at the repairers but not at home :-). If I take it and shake it around a lot
> it will start up.
Use a hammer.
That's what I used on my friend Jerry's old Apple II harder. It was dead as a
doornail and he decided that there was nothing on there that wasn't backed up
so I took a claw hammer and gave it a couple of sharp raps to the side.
The drive came back up and ran for a few days after that, long enough to really
make sure there was nothing on it he didn't need.
(your mileage may vary)
Paul Slootman
>[On a serios note, I actually have a Seagate ST251, 42meg drive, that for some
>reason after being off over night will not start up again. (well it works fine
>at the repairers but not at home :-). If I take it and shake it around a lot
>it will start up. Only problem is to get to the drive I have to remove a non
>flip top cover, take out two floppies and another hard drive and the
>controller to get to the screws, then put it all toghether when i've got it
>going. - Maybe I should try fix it as described :-)]
I've seen this (people complaining how hard it is to extract their
Seagate disk to give it "the twist") a couple of times now.
Why bother? You can "twist" the whole PC! Just make sure you twist in
the right orientation...
(It'll save some trips to the fitness room as well, if you have the
same type of hardware as I have; great arm exercise :-)
Disclaimer: I don't have any Seagate disks; I've always had some
aversion to them...
--
----------------
:sloo...@dri.nl : When you get to the point where you think that nothing
:+ 31 5496 88831 : is impossible, try pushing toothpaste back into a tube
----------------
Marshall L. Buhl Jr.
>Pa...@xcluud.sccsi.com (Paul Hutmacher) writes:
>PAUL>gw...@nntp-server.caltech.edu (g liu) writes:
>GLIU> my hard drive is quite noisy. would lubricating it somehow make it
>GLIU> quieter?
>Visually inspect the drive. If there is a spindle coming out of the top,
>it should have a metal contact against the spindle for a ground. If this
>has worn a tiny groove in the spindle, it may be causing the noise.
>IF YOU WANT, you COULD GENTLY bend the contact SLIGHTLY so it no longer
>rides in this groove. The noise will stop until another groove is worn
>into the spindle (quite a while in the future). BE CAREFUL NOT TO BREAK
>the contact. USE THIS INFO at your own PERIL.
Until you mentioned it, I had forgotten about the infamous squeeky
CDC drives Compaq put in their early 386's. The solution was to "cut
off" the ground contact. That's what my dealer told me to do and I did
it to about a half dozen. It worked and so do the drives years later.
Still too small though.
I don't know if this will cause a problem on other drives. Ron
definitely seemed concerned about it.
Sorry about interrupting all this delightful silliness with a serious
answer.
Marshall
--
Marshall L. Buhl, Jr. EMAIL: mars...@seri.gov
Senior Computer Engineer VOICE: (303)231-1014
Wind Program 1617 Cole Blvd., Golden, CO 80401-3393
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