Well gang, I think I now know why I was starting to have a few problems with apps on my main Maxtor 60 hard drive. Last week, my primary hard drive failed. Turned on the machine when I got home in the afternoon and it just wouldn't mount. If I had the Maxtor 60 drive even hooked up with a different drive as startup, it locked up the booting process when it got to my Maxtor mounting. But when I removed my Maxtor, system booted fine.
I initially thought it was either the logic board or the bearing gone bad cause it just seemed stuck. I even just found and bought an exact match on ebay. But now, I know it was a bearing that got hot and seized up. I hadn't even thought of inspecting the underside closely, but around the bearing, the scorch marks are visible in the black plastic body. The result, the platters were barely turning or not at all. I think what caused this is my running my s900 with the side of my case left open. Long term, I paid the price. Lesson learned. Been leaving it open so I could easily test drives and other devices. CPU remains fine because I use a fan there but clearly I've got to change my procedure or set up a larger fan to blow over everything. Summertime didn't help. The death of the hard drive was very slow so others who leave their cases open, beware! Anyway, I don't have many options to rescue my data. I could send the drive out and pay hundreds of dollars? Naw! Nor do I think Maxtor would do a 'bearing job' but I will ask them just in case. If not (likely scenario), I think I'm going to have to perform surgery and do a bearing transplant myself. Of course I could also do a platter transplant but that would force me to void two drive warranties. I've got a few bad Maxtors here of similar design and model which should use the same bearing. I will know for sure after opening them up and comparing. Gonna have to build myself a small clean box too. I've got most tools I think I will need. No doubt it's going to be tricky. Removal of the platters and swapping the bearings is the easy part. The main issues I am concerned about is removal of the arm, scratching the platters and parking the heads for restart. If anybody has any wise words in this area, I would appreciate hearing them. No doubt I am taking this whole process very seriously. I have toyed around with the insides of hard drives before and am fully aware of some of the extremely delicate areas. But unless somebody else has a better idea on how to get those platters turning again, I may have little choice. It may be another week before I am ready for the transplant so please let any ideas flow. Thanks, Dave s900 w/ Sonnet G4 Maxtor 60 Gig Model 96147U8 -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
