It really is surprising how durable the older drives are. I had a 2.1gb Seagate drive that I picked up for 99p, so I took off the cover and installed XP on it with the platters exposed to the air. It still works fine (and it's hypnotic to watch the heads scramble all over the disk). I have a few videos of it somewhere.
two things about older drives.... 1: they spin ALOT slower 2: most didnt have the spindle screw i was always curious if you left like an X in the top of the HD cover so the screw was still suported. if that would work. i imagine the University here has a clean room for electronics, i wonder if i pluged them if they would let me use it for a play room for a day. im sure i can get a cheep 7200 40 gig to experiment on. im pretty sure as long as that suport screw is intact it should work out, but the issue is if the X left in the metal is warped at all it will get pulled off balance............ BLAGH probly not worth it. only other option is making the screw hole in the plexie itself... sorry about the rant, thinking out loud, figured maybe somone else with an engineering mind might cling on to a random thought i blurted out... have fun.
After some testing and reading, i am starting to think that just removing the reader arm screw or spindle screw will unsettle the platters or arm enough to cause damage to some drives. It would allso be hard to screw those screws back in to the exact positions. You would probably just have to accept about a 10-20% failure rate to newer drives tue to misallignment of spindle and head, and allso try to figure out wich drives are most sensitive and stay away from those. I have figured out from my experiments and some reading online that IBM drives above 20 gigs are severely sensitive and should not be opened at all.
First, Why were you modding anywhere near a toilet? Second, What would your dog want with the HD anyways? Third, Why even put a window on a hard drive anyways. It almost always screws it up instantly, or within a few minutes.
