Michael Black wrote:

"Ancient_Hacker" ) writes:
Michael Kennedy wrote:
Anybody know where I can find a 60gb Hitachi Travelstar model
IC25N060ATMR04-0 hard drive so that I can replace the heads in one that was
dropped while running?

Dust issues aside, how do you know the heads are the problem? If the
heads have crashed, the disk surface is likely to be scarred up too.


I'm sure some or most of it is on the level of "urban legend". An
idea, which may have some truth if worked in some circles moves
out into the mainstream, where someone knows a guy who did it. But
by the time it gets to that point, much of the information is stripped
off.

Remember, it used to be "change the boards and that will fix the drive".
I still see people looking for specific types of drives for this sort
of thing. We don't really ever hear about whether they are successful.
(Actually, someone did ask here about it some months back, and we did learn
it didn't work.)

So maybe the board switching worked at some point (especially before
IDE drives), or maybe it just worked in some cases. But people grasp
at straws, so they still look for identical drives (of course,
once they start buying junkers, how do they know the "new" drive is
working enough to be a transplant donor?).

Someone hears something, finds something about changing heads, and
that's the way to go.

Because for most people, this is shotgunning the problem. They aren't
evaluating the problem, they are trying to impose solutions on it
in the hopes that something will fix the problem.

Michael


You could change the heads on some older 8" and larger hard drives,
in the 5 and 10 MB per platter days. There were places that sold
rebuilt heads and new platters so you could rebuild a drive for a
minicomputer. I knew somone who used to rebuild drives for Data general
minicomputers in a home made plexiglass box that was presurized with air
that was passed through a pair of HEPA filters so any dust was blown out
the front of the box. It was crude, but worked on the crude drives of
the day.



--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida