old ide/pata drives with loud bearings...anyone ever tried lubing them?

[salamontagne]

Was just curious if anyone's ever tried this successfully. How did you go about it? The only
thing that comes to mind is literally drilling a small hole on the bottom right on the motor and putting a few drops in via syringe.

Seems a shame to have a bunch of old drives perfectly working and then hearing them literally destroy
their motor's because the bearings lube dried out long ago.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Have you tried running them for a few days upside-down? Sometimes that will get enough lube redistributed to silence them a bit.

 

[salamontagne]

Can't say I have, though it makes perfect sense, thanks!

I've got an old quantum with the amazing capacity of 50mb that was one of my first drives. Will try.

I'm not worried about the noise so much as the idea that a perfectly good working drive will succumb not because of
bad sectors, not because the physical magnetic disc lost its capacity to store data, not because the voice coil actuator stopped working, but due to a lack of a few drops of oil!

Have you tried running them for a few days upside-down? Sometimes that will get enough lube redistributed to silence them a bit.