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Mac SE FDHD Corrupted HDD?
- Thread starter Mac
- Start date
68k
Experienced Member
USB floppy drive runs about $10 and is essential for swapping files with old Macs.
I use a USB floppy + basilisk emulator (on Windows 7 laptop) to trade files with my Powerbook 100..
I use a USB floppy + basilisk emulator (on Windows 7 laptop) to trade files with my Powerbook 100..
Last edited:
RoadWarrior
Member
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2012
- Messages
- 35
I didn't want to start a new thread because my situation is sort of similar. I recently got a Macintosh SE and the Hard drive no longer spins up. The LED on it does 3 slow blinks and then 4 or 5 quick ones and just stays like that.
RWallmow
Veteran Member
Hard drive is suffering from "sticktion"
I am guessing its a Miniscribe drive, I would carefully rotate the interrupter (the bit that says do not rotate by hand) a bit both ways to try to free the heads from the platter. If that doesn't do it the spindle motor is probably seized, a few slaps to the side of the drive might free it. It's been a while, but I THINK you can actually see the spindle shaft from the underside of the drive, you could probably drip a tiny bit of light oil on it and hope it soaks into it (run it upside down for a bit if you go this method, and clean off any excess, don't want it spraying excess oil on the PCB or inside the computer).
EDIT: WD-40 is NOT oil, get a real lubricant, WD-40 will just wet the existing lubricant making it seem better for a short time, but its just diluted it and it will dry back out quickly.
Failing all that, these computers, with the right formatter tool, can use just about ANY SCSI hard drive.
RoadWarrior
Member
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- Jun 28, 2012
- Messages
- 35
Sorry for the long wait on the reply. I had to order the torx driver off Amazon since I didn't have one. But anyways, I took the back casing off but didn't take the hard drive out because I powered it on and worked fine. I put it back together and turned it on and still worked, however after about 5 minutes the hard drive quit again. It wouldn't do anything again after a few tries so I let it sit a few hours, this time worked but quit in the middle of startup.
I didn't mention in my first post it was spinning and working fine, the problem is that it like looses power and spins down.
I didn't mention in my first post it was spinning and working fine, the problem is that it like looses power and spins down.
RWallmow
Veteran Member
It might not be "loosing power" per se, it could be meeting resistance spinning and going into error and spinning down. Though it could be a power issue as well, check the drive's power rating, I believe the PSU is designed to power about a 1amp (on both 5&12 volt rails) drive, if the drive is not stock, its possible it could be rated for more power than the PSU can stably supply. Or the PSU could have weakened and it can't supply enough power any more.
It's also VERY possible, and likely, that the drive is encountering some other error condition and powering itself down, especially when you combine it with error LED blinks (we still don't know which brand drive you have, so we don't know what those error blinks could indicate).
RoadWarrior
Member
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2012
- Messages
- 35
It is a Miniscribe model 8425sa
RWallmow
Veteran Member
Looks like it takes some work to figure out the blink error, time on and time off of the LED all represent different things, see my quote from the manual below.
In my experience these are usually fairly reliable drives, I have several 8425's still working, some of MFM and some of SCSI variations (even one MFM with an IDE bridge board on it). Only issue I have run into is stiction, little bump on the side, or small movement of interrupter before power on and they will usually spin up and work fine for me, not too bad for hard drives that are over 25 years old and were not really designed to last more than 5 or 10 years.
In my experience these are usually fairly reliable drives, I have several 8425's still working, some of MFM and some of SCSI variations (even one MFM with an IDE bridge board on it). Only issue I have run into is stiction, little bump on the side, or small movement of interrupter before power on and they will usually spin up and work fine for me, not too bad for hard drives that are over 25 years old and were not really designed to last more than 5 or 10 years.