Ok ive started this so that me or anyone can talk about their window mods. We need to remember that the HDD is sealed.. it was made in a clean room and we need to make sure now dust/dirt gets in it. so we need to make a clean room! or rather a clean box. We need these materials: Gloves(as long as posible) a clear/semi clear box masking tape once you have these things go ahead and drill/dremel out 2 holes in the side(its best to have them pretty close but now to close, about 15cm apart. sand the hole and romove all the excess bits that could fall into the HDD. cut 4 equal 5cm slits at the end of the gloves at equal intervals. then masking tape the gloves to the box and here is the final product More details soon/final product.
remember to THOUROUGLY wipe it with a wet cloth and then a dry cloth to trap all dust and dirt. Also, ive heard of someone who modded a WD raptor and they ended up dying because the LEDs he installed melted and 'OH #$%^' was the result. Rage.
This is, so far, the exact same guide that I saw somewhere else that was written by the creator of a Half-Life 2 case mod. :|
uh oh. Danger will robinson danger! Good luck on this. I hope to do the same thing when it gets to be that time in my mod, so itll be interesting to see what comes of yours. Good luck, and may the dust not be with you.
Part 2 The HDD ok here we go again. once i built the box it was time to put everything in it and start work. be VERY carefull, the hdd can be damaged easily. once you have pulled the cover off( there are at least 2 screws hidden under warning labels) wrap the hard drive in plastic wrap and leave it in the box!! dont forget to take the top with you! next. get out you trusty dremel and cut out the main area, be sure to leave a little lip for the clear window to sit on. WARNING this is VERY hard, i used a fiberglass cut-off wheel and nearly 10 normal cutting wheels. Then sand the metal around the hole you made. so what could we use? I used plexi. which in some hardware stores its hard to find! So Plexi goes by these names: Acrylic Acrylic Glass Clear Acrylic Perspex and its sometimes expensive/ or you have to buy it in bulk. Be sure to get 1mm thick plexi as the 3mm(the one i used) wouldnt fit in the drive! so i had to mount it on top. cut/sand the plexi to size then use a plastic-metal bonding glue. This is the final result: ok now carefully clean all the metal/plexi shards from around the top. next insert it into the clean box and screw it together. This is the final result: you think thats all?? well guess what happend to mine? some dust stuck onto the plexi and fell onto the hard drive! [im glad its only 10gig] so when i get a replacement drive i will post the actual success! BTW. you can still see the hdd reader arm moving as it tries to detect the data
If i was going to do it i'd use a vacume cleaner on the box to pull all the dust out. Load it with the tool and the HD, de dust it with the vac and wet cloth etc etc, take the HD to bits then put the HD in a thick clear sealable back and open the box, then mod the top cage part for the window and make it air tight! Alos make sure it's dust free, then carry on in revers with the vacue running to draw a vacume but also removes the dust
I wouldnt even try this lol, unless i had a real clean room to hand! other than that there is like 99% chance your hard drtive will die! its extremly sensitive! lol
lol since this was my dirst time doing this mod, i knew that something would break! The next mod will be better. its just that the dust stuck to the plexi and it wouldnt fully come of(i think it had come off). I used a special cloth for cleaning plexi(came with my thermaltake case lol!).any suggestions for cleaning the plexi?
lol you should prolly change the name to a mod how-NOT-to . Good luck on the second one, may you have more luck then this one.
The Original Zap-Wizard came up with a great solution to this - He knew that no matter what he did, the drive would end up dying... (He tried a few before coming to this conclusion.) So, he gave up on doing it for real, and modded a hard drive into a disk activity monitor. It was a real hard drive with a window, but it didn't have any real data on it. Instead, it spun anytime he was accessing his real hard drive and the read/write arm swung across the platters. The effect was really cool. (For the record, I'm only 99% sure it was Zap-Wizard - it could have been someone else.)
lol ud have to use a new vac or the dust would end up in the box, and you would have to have a hole to allow air through it or a very strong vac. i might try to put a vac hole on the side... ill let u kow how it turns out.
the other hdd window mods i've seen cleaned it with a can of compressed air good luck for the second attempt
Well, because it was ZapWizard, he wrote an excellent guide available here: http://www.zapwizard.com/Mods/RealHD-IDE/index.html (We miss you ZapWizard..... If anyone is still in contact with him, say 'Hi' for me.)
