fatwizard
Veteran Member
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.
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
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.
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
Last edited: