im sure some of you guys have made hard drive windows on your drives. ive recently had a hankering to do this. i want to make a plexi window to cover the entire top of the drive. thats not the deal though. i ALSO wanted to drop in a led or two for added WOW power. question is, would putting leds in the drive harm it in any way over time? will the platters or read write heads be affected by the light or heat produced? have any of you put leds in your drives? all input welcome and needed. thanks.
your major concern (as you probably know) is dust. theres about a 50x more chance that dust will get into your hardrive and ruin it than leds ruining the drive. as long as you connect the leds up properly and make sure everything is airtight, you should be fine... hopefully....
yeah,i understand the dust problem pretty well. my idea is to make a sort of template that i can then use to make a full plexi window. ill have to allow for screw lengths and height over the spindle. then, make a mount inside the plexi lid that wont be in anythings way and glue a led or two to it. probably power it via its own power rather than tinker inside the drive to try to power it. have it all ready to go slip it back on and make sure to seal it up good and tight. i just dont know anything about ambient hdd temp or the amount of heat leds put of ( i believe it to be minimal) and how light affects hdd platters. i thought that if light was good for the hdd then companies would make them with preinstalled windows. maybe not?
Are you planning to power the LEDs by wires going into the Hard Drive? If so it'll be hard to create a complete seal between the Hard Drive and the plastic. My advice is look at all the wiring in the Hard Drive, as sometime you can power the LEDs from the internal housing. Second point is some advice about sealing the Hard Drive. If you've heard this before i apologise. If you run a shower in your bathroom and let the room steam up, once the steam settles do the mod as the air will be as clean as your gonna get it. ...
never heard that about the shower, do you have to wait until the air is back to normal humidity? or can you have a little bit of fog in the room? im worried about tinkering inside the drive as it could get dangerous. i was planning on making a cover out of 1/8 inch plexi and adding a little lip to the bottom of the edge, then countersinking the screw holes. for the leds, i was gonna make a groove between the plexi lip and the plexi top, run the wires in there and then superglue them in place. i should be able to use the original hdd seal and if that isnt enough, a bead of hot glue should work nicely. not sure if i made that clear... by lip i mean a rectangular plexi ring that will work as a spacer to provide space over the spindle, they ring and the plexi cover will be glued (or mek-ed) togegher to form one piece.
I guess if your not planning on powering the LEDs from the components inside the Hard Drive, then its best to stay away as you might not know what to look for. Plus it varries with the type of Hard Drive. As for the shower in the bathroom thing, yeah you need to wait until the room is completly clear, so all the water particles have settled. The idea is they "clean" the air and make it more dust free. Its the closest thing you'll get to a clean room. ...
hmm i have never heard of the shower thing before i plan on practicing on an old crappy 2.5gb hard drive but i am going to dremel out the centerof the already existing cover and putting a window inside any more suggestions i should know of
All i can say is go for it mate, i did it, on a dead hard drive, So there wasnt a point in doing so. You wait till u see what those platters do
I think I remember reading in... mashies? project log that it doesn't work with 7200RPM drives, unless you keep the metal that holds the drive motor intact on both sides (the bit it all screws into), as without it the drives vibrates to much and stops working after a couple of days. :EDIT: Found it
hmmm... never heard of that, but it seems you may have just saved me a ton of time, frustration, and cash there flax, thanks. so i guess if i mod my design and leave a band of metal across the top of the spindle and leave the screw in place maybe ill be ok? what about just putting a screw through the plexi that will still go into the spindle? i really want to get this one figured out here. thanks for the input so far.
In theory, if you leave the spindle screw intact you will be fine, either by running the screw through the acrylic or leaving the metal intact. Light will not affect the drive in anyway. Companies haven't produced a clear cased drive because of the cost involved in doing so. Research and development, retooling lines, etc. Just so a few geeks can see the internals working. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the future.
I'm just gonna give it a go on an old 5400rpm 4.2Gb Seagate... Hoping to connect it right under a top window that I've planned, purely as eye candy cos I hardly ever use it any more.
Sure. The screw will try to vibrate side to side..it would have to crack the acrylic to wiggle free. The acrylic is no more flexible than the aluminum top, so it should be fine. Just make sure the joints at the sides of the top are strong enough to resist any flexing. Keep in mind that this is all in theory. I don't have the money to be trying something like this yet.
if its an old unused or bad hard drive, you can always turn the read arm into a speaker did it over at afro-tech mods and good luck with the hard drive window, I did it, but at the time I didn't have any means to test the 300 meg hard drive so i just turned it into caseless speaker
Hey.. I did that mod recently.. Replaced the top cover entirely with plexi. Check it out: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44358
neither do i....thats why if im gonna do it, it MUST work afterwards... krypton: thats a nice mod, very similar to what im planning. you got any 'during the process' pictures? maybe give me a little detail as to how you did it? it looks good.
If you screw through the plexi into the spindle, better get the hole in exactly the right place, hate to imagine the effects of a lateral force on one end of a fast rotating bit, might not do the bearing any favours....
yeah id mark my holes right off of the original hard drive cover. that should allow me to get it right on. im just wondering if i can fit a small metal grommet in there to add some extra strength.
