On 2021/05/19 6:21 a.m., Mike wrote:
In article ,
Rayner Lucas wrote:

with a thick plume of absolutely foul clinging smoke.

I must have got the alternate-flavour ones, somewhere between burnt
toast and toffee. Although 100% unwanted when coming out of a piece of
electronic equipment, it's not *that* bad.

If the hard drive is an old shoe-box style one (5.25", full height)
that uses stepper motors to trundle the head out over the disk and
back, then they don't tend to like having the head dropped on the
active disk -- any sign of diagnostic LEDs on the drive, as these
can start giving blink-codes to say "Didn't spin up, there's
a head holding me back!" etc.


Might need a "Shake & Bake" operation to get it spinning again...I used
to pick up the drive and hold it in my hand, then quickly rotate my
wrist in the direction of spin to free up the heads. Then back up the
disk right away!

John :-#)#