On 7/9/10 12:00 PM, john CARMONNE wrote: *snip*
> For fear of sounding dumb. Just what does a person do with the magnets? > Where are they in the drive. You don't sound dumb, not at all. A lot of people don't realize that a hard drive has magnets in them (kind of ironic, considering that a magnet is sudden death to magnetic media, such as hard drives). The magnet assembly sits at the end of the actuator arm, with part of the arm assembly 'sandwiched' in between the two magnets (some drives use a single magnet). If you look at the wikipedia article on hard disk drives, under the Architecture heading, it has a picture of the actuator arm and magnet assembly (the magnets are in the upper left area of the drive base in the picture). Hard drives used to have another motor that would position the drive arm and head assembly (the actuator), but that was replaced with the magnets and a voice coil assembly that uses the magnetic field from the main magnets and voice coil to position the arm. The voice coil is, as I understand it, quieter, more accurate, and a heck of a lot less likely to get out of calibration. I believe it takes less power and generates less heat as well. Any more detail than that, I can not provide as it can go deep into magnetic field and engineering theory and construction, both of which I have only a vague grasp of as well as lacking the brain cycles to fully understand at this point. :-) As for what does one do with them? Whatever one does with any magnet, just recall the magnets in a typical hard drive are /very/ strong (and I'm very serious about how strong they are). I've given myself blood blisters from the force these things have when being attracted to the appropriate metal. Right now, I've got a few of them holding various things on my refrigerator, like notes, an advert to the local take away pizza place, and a bottle opener for beer. :-) They are also great for fishing out metal parts that drop down a drain that one wouldn't be able to retrieve otherwise, as well as finding the ^%$&^ tiny screws from a laptop that just fell on the floor. I also have one attached to my tool belt use it as a nail holder when I'm pulling out (or using) nails around the house and don't want to have to stick my hands in a pocket full of sharp pointy objects. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
