Re: Ebuyer Hard Drives

Chris wrote:
In message <1200e56hq58l102@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, =?UTF-8?B?UGFsaW5kcuKYu21l?= <me9@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes

Dave wrote:

Recently I have got them through sandwiched between two 20mm bits of polystyrene, they used to be packed much better.

IIUC, the mass of the heads has been reducing year on year. It was that mass, on the end of a thin cantilever, that limited the g force that could be withstood before permanent deformation took place. Plus, of course, that earlier drives didn't self-park - so the head could come into contact with the surface even when unpowered.

It used to be enough, for even a parked unpowered drive, to place the drive on one edge and allow it to fall flat onto a hard surface. Recently, these things happen, I knocked a drive off a bench to fall a metre or so onto a (hard) rubber anti-static mat. It passed the full manufacturer's expanded diagnostic tests, with no errors..

But I agree, hard polystyrene is not a good idea. Bubblewrap, OTOH.. ;)

I have seen more drives dead electrically (possibly static, possibly incorrect power connection/removal) than dead mechanically - swapping the pec for a good one bringing the drive back to life..


I seriously recommend you download and use MHDD - it has the very handy ability to graphically show the surface of the drive - and consequently any sectors the drive has trouble reading or has previously remapped. It does this by timing how long it takes to read groups of sectors and converting that to a colour on a scrolling graph.

You can even see how it struggles to read sectors when you tap the table next to the drive - something i wouldn't recommend on anything but a scrap drive ;)

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

Thanks for that. I used to run a drive with the cover off for my students and then breathe on it whilst it was accessing. Not quite the same thing, but we do take these incredibly state of the art machines for granted...Amazingly, the drive would recover and I used the same one for several years. But I never told the students that...

But note my repeated reference to *unpowered* drives. The post was on the topic of transporting drives - which would be unpowered at the time.

A powered-up drive is an entirely different situation. I date back to the days when drives were sunk into re-inforced concrete holes in the computer room floor. A head crash then used to shake the building. But everyone knew that you had had a head crash....

--
Sue



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