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Lead shot in hard drives? Why??

G

Greysky

Jan 1, 1970
0
I recently tore apart a 80Gb Maxtor hard drive that gave up the ghost. To my
surprise, inside the device, near the electronics, was a clear plastic
container with a glued on plastic lid. Inside this box was a lot of tiny
round pellets which looked like lead buckshot. Does anyone have any idea
what these are for? There were no obvious electrical connections visible.
Anyone have an idea??
 
S

sideshow bob

Jan 1, 1970
0
ive opend a drive with them
inside, i think there for air filltering.
 
G

Guy Macon

Jan 1, 1970
0
Greysky said:
I recently tore apart a 80Gb Maxtor hard drive that gave up the ghost. To my
surprise, inside the device, near the electronics, was a clear plastic
container with a glued on plastic lid. Inside this box was a lot of tiny
round pellets which looked like lead buckshot. Does anyone have any idea
what these are for? There were no obvious electrical connections visible.

Those are to absorb any moisure in the air inside the drive.
 
R

Robert Baer

Jan 1, 1970
0
Greysky said:
I recently tore apart a 80Gb Maxtor hard drive that gave up the ghost. To my
surprise, inside the device, near the electronics, was a clear plastic
container with a glued on plastic lid. Inside this box was a lot of tiny
round pellets which looked like lead buckshot. Does anyone have any idea
what these are for? There were no obvious electrical connections visible.
Anyone have an idea??

Silica Gel, to absorb moisture.
 
J

Jeff

Jan 1, 1970
0
Greysky said:
I recently tore apart a 80Gb Maxtor hard drive that gave up the ghost. To my
surprise, inside the device, near the electronics, was a clear plastic
container with a glued on plastic lid. Inside this box was a lot of tiny
round pellets which looked like lead buckshot. Does anyone have any idea
what these are for? There were no obvious electrical connections visible.
Anyone have an idea??

Desiccant to suck up any moisture. The container was likely over the vent
hole, which is usually covered with a fiber paper material to act as a
filter.
 
P

Phil Hobbs

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jeff said:
Desiccant to suck up any moisture. The container was likely over the vent
hole, which is usually covered with a fiber paper material to act as a
filter.

The lube on the disc surface tends to turn into mayonnaise, leading to lots
of stiction problems in tropical climates. Leaving disc drives in a
warehouse in Singapore for a few months is an excellent lube torture test.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs
 
K

keith

Jan 1, 1970
0
The lube on the disc surface tends to turn into mayonnaise, leading to lots
of stiction problems in tropical climates. Leaving disc drives in a
warehouse in Singapore for a few months is an excellent lube torture test.

Hmm, last I knew they no longer put "lube" in the platters. AFAIK, the
current drives all have head retraction and don't use any gunk on the
drives. Stiction is a long solved problem (head design and parking).
 
K

Keith Williams

Jan 1, 1970
0
on the disk spindles, not the heads.

Where on the spindles? "Stiction" was cause by the heads dragging/stuck
on the platter. Since heads no longer touch the platter stiction
shouldn't be a problem.

Top-posting sucks.
 
K

Keith Williams

Jan 1, 1970
0
They don't. Maxtor's latest Maxline III and Diamondmax 10 don't. Seagate's
latest Barracuda 7200.8 doesn't. Some of the high end Hitachi drives do.
Interesting. I know the last few generations of IBMs (with the glass
platters) did. I (wrongly) assumed it was the norm these days.
Thanks.
 
W

Winfield Hill

Jan 1, 1970
0
Keith Williams wrote...
[email protected] says...

Interesting. I know the last few generations of IBMs (with the glass
platters) did. I (wrongly) assumed it was the norm these days.

They park off the active data-writing area, IIUC. BTW, Hitachi bought
IBM's hard-drive division, so "IBM drives" are sold as Hitachi drives.
 
K

keith

Jan 1, 1970
0
Keith Williams wrote...

They park off the active data-writing area, IIUC.

No, that's parking the heads in the "landing-zone". The more recent IBM
drives retracted the heads so they never touched the platter.
BTW, Hitachi bought IBM's hard-drive division, so "IBM drives" are
sold as Hitachi drives.

Sure.
 
D

Don Klipstein

Jan 1, 1970
0
No, that's parking the heads in the "landing-zone". The more recent IBM
drives retracted the heads so they never touched the platter.

And if the head lands in a "landing zone", can the head suffer any
damage?

I am curious since I still do some things that make some use of a
roughly 260 MB drive of late 1993 vintage, although I mostly use drives a
lot more recent than that (80 and 120 GB)...

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
 
K

keith

Jan 1, 1970
0
And if the head lands in a "landing zone", can the head suffer any
damage?

Not normally, no. It's designed to do so. The issue here was "stiction",
which is impossible with a drive that retracts heads, but may continue to
be a problem with drives that park the heads on the platter.
I am curious since I still do some things that make some use of a
roughly 260 MB drive of late 1993 vintage, although I mostly use drives
a lot more recent than that (80 and 120 GB)...

You will likey find those older drives will suffer from stiction. Many
even "park" the heads on the active area of the disk.
 
M

Mike

Jan 1, 1970
0
AIUI, at least the last few generations of drives have parked their
heads off the platter. If the power dies there is enough energy stored
to safely park the heads. Of course they don't touch the surface
during operation.

Laptop drives often (if not usually) retract the heads, since they need
greater shock resistance.

Head retraction isn't necessarily the ideal thing you might think it is.
Trying to transition a head from floating over a disk surface to moving up
a ramp without running into the disk as it leaves (or returns) is a
difficult problem.
The "stiction" problem was with drives that had landing zones and did
use a lubricant on the surface of the disk. The lubricant tended to
collect in the landing zone (outer part of the surface) and glue the
head to the platter.

The landing zone is usually on the inner tracks. The outer tracks can hold
more data than inner tracks can, so the cost to use the outer tracks is
higher.
 
W

Winfield Hill

Jan 1, 1970
0
keith wrote...
No, that's parking the heads in the "landing-zone".

Right, which is well off the active data-writing area.
The more recent IBM drives retracted the heads so they never
touched the platter.

And IBM added the feature of parking the drive heads whenever a
slight motion of the laptop is detected, on the assumption it's
falling to the floor, etc. This new feature is so sensitive that
one soon learns not to even shift the laptop about on one's lap,
or at least to do so very gingerly, to avoid the safety shutoff.
 
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