Brian Henning wrote: > For folks who actually still haven't torn open a dead drive to see the > innards, there's a small (but fairly powerful) magnet which holds the heads > in parking position when the drive is unpowered. A small metal tab on the > positioning assembly makes contact with the magnet when the heads are parked > and goes *click!*
The magnet aren't so powerful anymore... Fairly recently, I took apart an old full height 5.25 inch 500 MB SCSI drive. The magnet is GINORMOUS. I didn't know how to properly disassemble the drive, and it was very late at night... And the mechanism on the back of the heads got stuck against the magnet. It seems the magnets job is to put tension on the heads or something, I assume to help steady them. Well, there is a space between the back of the head mechanism and the magnet. I managed to eliminate that space, and I wasn't strong enough to separate them. It took 2 screwdrivers and about 20 minutes of prying and leverage to get them apart :). The same night I took apart a dead 3.5 inch hard drive. The magnet barely sticks to anything compared to the 5.25 full height. BTW, the 5.25 inch drive had NINE platters. The heads wrote to both sides of each platter, except the outer. The outer platters' inside surfaces were only used. Pat
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
-- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
