I'm interested in making some hard drive window mods, but I have a coupla questions. How easy is it to damage a hard drive platter when not protected by anything? When the window mod is finished how should I clean the platter, if at all? How big of a problem is dust on hard drive platter (by this I mean do I have to remove every single remnant of dust in the HD or is alright to have a couple of dust particles on the platters)? Thats all for now, thanks!
Older HDD's are a little more forgiving of dust, as their clearances are not as tight as newer drives. However, dust is dust and on a HDD platter its like a boulder. You cannot clean the platters...anything you use, other than air, is going to leave more than it cleans. After all, these things are built in clean rooms. You have to make sure your work area is spotless, with as little dust in the air as possible. While working on the lid, keep the platters in a sandwich bag type container. If you have something thats antistatic...meaning it has a negative charge and dust is attracted to it, you can try to hold it over the opening to attract any stray bits before replacing the lid.
just to give an idea how close the heads are close to the platter: if you touch it with your finger, it will leave a fingerprint and when you plug the hdd, you see the heads going through the fingerprint and making lines on the platter... if you have an old 4/8mb, you should try it
in an old book i have somwere it shows a scale diagram of hdd platter the head and the kind of stuf that could get on it.a finger print was about twice as big as the gap between the head and platter, a piece of dust was masive compared to the gap and a human hair dwarved the gap. so considering a finger print wont fit i wouldn't advise using any thing but air like shadow spawn said. if the head hit a speck of dust at the high speed the platters spin at the head would probably jump screwing the hdd royally if i can find the pic ill scan it and post it, you'll be suprised.
Start with a small drive. The HD window I just finished was on an old working 200mb drive that I found at the dump. As long as you keep the platter side of the drive in a *clean* sealed bag, and nothing touches it, it should be fine. Just don't stick you finger into it. (or a screwdriver etc.) ~Davy
that is so bollocks a spec of dust on a certain part will, for example, make that bit unreadable. Say you have 3 platters (they do do them right? im not a hd conesseur ) thats say 1 5000th of a third of the drive, so 1 meg for every 15gigs, though it doesnt work quite like that and the ratios are a little differant, you get the idea... HOWEVER, you are going ot get more than 1 spec, on the top platter anyway. On average, in an operating theatre, which, apart from clean rooms and stuf, is about as clean as you are going to get, there are 10 000 particles of dust per cubic meter! so, basically there is alot. You just have to be careful and take precautions. And a can of compressed air will be good for cleaning a hard drive platter And making sure you seal any holes afterwards
JafferAB, the spec of dust wont damage the platter, but, if you run the hard drive with a spec of dust on it, the IO head will hit the spec of dust, jump or jitter upwards and crash back into the drive head scratching it or otherwise damaging it and crashing your OS (probably)... If you get dust on it then throughoughly air dust it off, will be okay, but like someone said, a fingerprint is thick enough to smash into the IO head so a speck of dust is like an iceberg!
The platters are lubed with a ver thin sheet of silicon based oil, so dust will stick to the platters all too well. (the oil protects the platters in case of a head touchdown, or while the platters rev up) When running, the heads ride on an 'air bearing' a few microns above the surface of the disk. http://www-adl.stanford.edu/images/ddrvlab.pdf On the last page of this PDF is a pretty good size compairison. That said, I have been thinking about putting together a pretty simple mini enviornment. A sort of cross between a clean room and a hood. If I can get my hands on the right parts, like the super HEPA filters and a large enough blower, as well at thge right paints, I think I can get to something clean enough to work on a project like a hard drive window. (I would be happy if I could get better than class 1000, really really happy if I could somehow manage class 100)
What I've found to work (because I heard it elsewhere, and for the life of me I can't remember where) is just going into a bathroom, turning on all the hot water until it gets a Little muggy. Once there is some humidity, but not enough to fog up the windows, quickly remove the warranty voiding tape and the cover of the drive and gently place the rest of the drive including platters into a ziplock bag. (or wrap them in celophane) The humidity usually weighs down the dust in the room, so nothing will fly up and into the drive. I've done a drive like this, and it still works and looks cool to this day! Good luck!
