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Stuck

fatwizard

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2012
Messages
525
Location
Indiana, USA
While shifting some of my stuff to a different room, I ran across three ST-238 hard drives that I couldn't recall the status of. Time to setup my test rig to see what's what. The first drive setup and tested nicely. The second drive just grunted when I flipped the power switch. So I cycled power off then on again just to see if I could bump it into starting. With a little "ting" sound it did indeed begin to spin, but it "tinged" repeatedly with each revolution!

This simply can't be good. I shut it down and pulled the cover to see just what the heck was going on, and this is what I found.

20171231_002132.jpg 20171231_002142.jpg

The head was coming around and smacking the arm with each rev making a surprisingly bell like sound. I tried to pull the head off of the platter with my fingertips, but even with considerable force, it didn't budge. Now there is frequent discussion here about using the old MFM (in this case RLL) drives in their proper vintage context, or switching to a solid state solution, but I gotta tell you, you can't have this kind of fun with SD cards. :D
 
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the mechanical aspect is what i love most about these older drives! Just got an old 40MB drive unstuck the other day cracking it open and messing around, stepper motor was seized and not meshing....luckily mine works fine now.
 
I've pulled heads off with sticktion before, but usually it was by grabbing the stepper shaft and rotating it with pliers. Must have a really strong spindle motor, with high starting torque!
 
Oh yes, I experienced something exactly like this myself.
Now I'm wondering what would be the recommended procedure for running old drives, unused for years, with some precious data to recover...
- DON'T apply power
- open it in a dust-free chamber
- make sure there's no sticktion...
 
Oh yes, I experienced something exactly like this myself.
Now I'm wondering what would be the recommended procedure for running old drives, unused for years, with some precious data to recover...
- DON'T apply power
- open it in a dust-free chamber
- make sure there's no sticktion...
When I have a drive with stiction I give the drive a sharp, angular twist along the spindle's axis. I do this first with no power applied and then with power applied (if the drive still refuses to spin up). This works a treat with some FH Maxtor MFM tanks I have that work fine once the platters start spinning. :)
 
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