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Worst scratched hard drive ever

S

squirrel-steam

Experienced Member
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May 6, 2007
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Location
Michigan, US
I opened up the old 1gb hd that was in my 386dsi, and discovered this:

scratchedsmall.jpg


it seems it only effected the top platter! No wonder it didn't work quite right.
 
It didn't really sound like anything, just a drive humming away, perhaps the read/write head slowly ground away at it? I don't know, those are really deep grooves. Seems like some files may have gotton jammed in there, it was running for 72 hours streight once, i accidently left the 386 on all weekend when i was away, good test for it though!
 
Hmm, I've heard of migrating files, but it never occurred to me that they might actually be finding their way off the hard disk platter and getting jammed under the head, causing a crash; did you notice any escaping when you opened up the HDA or had they all expired by then?

m
 
I would seriously doubt it.

After all, once they tried to move, the "centrifugal effect" of the 5400/7200 rpm spin rate would have splatted them up against the inside of the shell.
 
You're thinking of bytes, not files; dropping the occasional byte doesn't usually cause much trouble, they just fly out as you say and eventually get trapped in the air filter (unless you drop too many, which is why they always warn you not to drop the drive or expose it to any shock which tends to loosen and knock off too many at once and clog the filter).

But some files are pretty long, so they'd be looped around a few times (especially if you defragged recently) so once the CTL-Z got free and took the rest of the file along they'd be whipping around in there almost certain to catch the head, especially if the head was sitting on a lower track at the time. Unusual that the entire file was on one platter though, so it must have been fairly small.

But you're right; they probably wouldn't have survived, although some of the ones that didn't migrate might still be OK, at least partially. If you didn't mind the odd missing sector you might be able to defragment them using a little glue logic.

m
 
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A friend of mine once had an Amiga 590 hard drive (I think). It began to lose capacity, so for every reformat after a crash it reported to be smaller and smaller. Finally my friend opened it up, and found metal dust and chips all inside the drive. How it could work at all is a bit of a mystery to me.
 
MikeS said:
You're thinking of bytes, not files; dropping the occasional byte doesn't usually cause much trouble, they just fly out as you say and eventually get trapped in the air filter (unless you drop too many, which is why they always warn you not to drop the drive or expose it to any shock which tends to loosen and knock off too many at once and clog the filter).

But some files are pretty long, so they'd be looped around a few times (especially if you defragged recently) so once the CTL-Z got free and took the rest of the file along they'd be whipping around in there almost certain to catch the head, especially if the head was sitting on a lower track at the time. Unusual that the entire file was on one platter though, so it must have been fairly small.

But you're right; they probably wouldn't have survived, although some of the ones that didn't migrate might still be OK, at least partially. If you didn't mind the odd missing sector you might be able to defragment them using a little glue logic.

m
Click to expand...

I will bow to your superior knowledge of how this actually occurs and suggest a cold compress and not moving too much in this heat :)
 
Hahaha cool, and to think, there is a whole generation that now wouldn't understand what we're talking about when we talk about playing it backwards or have any clue what a record was or the significance of 33 & 1/3, 45 or 78...

Wow, now I feel old, lol
 
I've done some calculations, and i came to this conclusion.

In the 72 hours i left the disk running, it traveled the equivelent of
4267.255094124300861916519165195439435 miles in 72 hours.

Its easy really, just measure the diameter of the disk (3.781 inches, probalby varies a few thousands for different hd's,) then times it by pi (11.87836182322300823462725463218), so thats the cirumference of the disk.

Then, there is 5280 feet in 1 mile, so it rotates 5334.0688676553760773956494299298 times in 1 mile, so makes .98779053104729186618437952406108 miles per minute, and at59.26743186283751197106277144366 mph, times that by 72 (or number of hours it has spun,) and you come up with how many miles it has traveled.

This only works for a 5400rpm hard drive.
 
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