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From: ins845b@monu4.cc.monash.edu.au (mr  k.l. lentin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: how to lubricate noisy hard drive?
Message-ID: <1991May22.145546.15579@monu0.cc.monash.edu.au>
Date: 22 May 91 14:55:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: monu0.1991May22.145546.15579
References: <1991May19.063143.2846@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> <1991May20.145859.11814@news.cs.indiana.edu> <1991May21.155620.27561@donner.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
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In article <1991May21.155620.27561@donner.SanDiego.NCR.COM> huffman@tortuga.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Bill Huffman) writes:
>In article <1991May20.145859.11814@news.cs.indiana.edu> bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) writes:
>>| >mpd@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.
>>
>>| gwoho@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.

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