kony wrote:

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 16:47:22 -0600, Notan
wrote:

Yes, you're missing that heat density high enough to melt
solder on a bit will not heat up and entire drive enough to
damage it. Ever noticed that things can be soldered and the
rest of the board isn't trash afterwards? Same situation,
except that it's an order of magnitude harder to heat up a
giant hunk of metal enough to do damage.


While the case might be metal, there's a good chance that some of
the internal components aren't... Heat those up and your drive is
dead in the water!

If someone has never soldered anything large in their entire
life, this certainly isn't the best project to start out
with... but generally speaking, it's rather trivial to heat
up a piece and not have it heat up a giant block of metal
connected by a mere millimeter or two of loose contact, very
much at all in the time it takes to melt a little solder.

I used to design, and build, printed circuit boards, so I'm more
than casually familiar with soldering techniques! g

What I'm not familiar with is the design of *this* particular hard
drive enclosure. Are sheet metal or machine screws used? Are they
driven into plastic or some type of threaded metal?

See where I'm going?

yes but I have no idea, I"d already deleted the rest of the
thread and too lazy to go hunt it down again. In any case,
it should not damage a drive as those are encased in metal,
it'd be a problem if the screw was in a plastic casing
though I'd be surprised if the screw was very hard to get
out of a plastic casing so I suppose I'd assumed metal.

Personally, I like the idea of epoxying something to the head
of the screw, rather than using heat.

Whatever you decide, be sure to let us know what you came up
with... None of us are ever too old to learn something new.

Good Luck!

Notan