Howdy everyone. I wanted to know if it is safe to spray paint a hard drive. And yes, I mean the outside, not the inside.
The big concern is that there are Air holes, which help regulate pressure in the HDD, if these get paint in them, or are blocked It's gonna spell game over for the HDD. That being said, you could safely cover them, and paint them, and depending how daring you are, you can spray paint directly onto the board on the back of the card aswell
I can't see reason why not. It's even air-tight so dirt never should get the change of getting into the HDD. Than again, who am I to say that so easily....^^' Let see what the other BT's have to say.
Interesting, it was my opinion that the insides are airtight so no dust, crap, whatever gets in there and fails the disc. Anyone know for sure or anyone have any experience with this?
i would only make sense.. i mean, think of the consiquences of dust flating around inside your platters of valuable data.. every now and then getting in between the heads and disk surface, to put 100's of concentric scratches in
My hardrives do have air holes on them - the message by the hole states: From that I would guess air does pass through but maybe through a filter to equalize the pressure. I would not want my hardrives to explode (air pressure can do such a thing) when being shipped via airplane from a place of low altitude if there was not a way to equalize pressure.
I don't think my hard drive has air holes or breather holes. But if it does and I cover them, would I be ok then?
I don't think so, those breather holes are there for a reason. My only concern would be if the paint would keep the heat from escaping the hard drive. I suppose if you didn't put a thick layer, you'd be fine.
Painting is no good for hard drives. The vibration at start up shakes the paint loose. You have to anodize them. Short the power wires together and hook them up to one electrode of your PS. Then dip the whole thing into the electrolytic bath and turn on the juice. There is no need to cover any breathing holes or check polarity of the PS because the result will be a dead drive, no matter what you do , but the die cast Aluminum housing will look beautiful.
is this a Maxtor drive? reason is, i took one apart with that exact message (stuck the sticker on the end of a Sharpie. i still think it would be cool to blow that thing up a hundred times and put it on a shirt. people would buy, especially computer geeks ). anywho, yes there is a little white packet of filter material, but its EXTREMELY thick and dense, as to not let any dust or other particles in there. [/offtopic blather] anyway, i would find a really old, like 3.2GB drive that works and try it. if it works afterword, i would do it to your normal drive. i dont know that anyone who hasnt experimented could give a definite answer, so.... mod on
hdds DO have holes in them, and air DOES come out. i just installed a sexy black (even the top is black, not silver) wd 160 gig last night, and was suprised at the amount of air coming out of the hole in the top of the thing. it was quite the breeze.
I painted an old 3.2GB, but it eventually died I think it was because the head connectors got paint on them and weren't connecting properly. But then it may have been because the drive was mounted upside down... There's a thread about it on here somewhere...
Looks Awesom and all, but sucks it broke. O well it was only a 3.2 gb. Something to hang on the wall. LOL
HDD directionality doesn't matter (provided that the drive uses magnets to move the read-write head, if it uses a stepper motor then BEWARE!!! and throw the 200 meg drive away ) lets just say that if you do, be careful as hell and leave jumper settings exposed or memorize them
Breather holes = vital, don't cover them ... Just an explanation on how they work : air = room temperature inside and outside the HD when powered off then, when the HD starts working ( spinning + heads moving ) the air inside the HD heats, and naturally, increases its volume. The breather holes are there to avoid pressure build up, otherwise, the HDs would work with increased internal pressure and cause the heads to either fail to work accurately ( increased air resistance can mess with head positionning ) , or fail due to increased stress.
Check out this site. In the Mods section, look at "Using a real harddrive as a IDE Activity Indicator" Hope this helps
