drive repair tips?

[Sridhar Ayengar]

der Mouse wrote:
> I have a disk drive - a (relatively) modern sealed unit - which appears
> to have mechanical trouble.  The noise it makes spinning up says to my
> ear "bearing friction".
> 
> I'm considering taking it apart and lubing the bearing.  Of course,
> this would at best be a temporary fix, since it is on its way out at
> this point; this is more to gain experience on a throwaway device than
> to actually recover the drive.  (All the bits from it are safe; live
> mirroring is great for that.)
> 
> Any tips from the collective wisdom?  Obviously, I want to do this in
> as close to a cleanroom as I can reasonably find, and have the platter
> assembly open as short a time as I can.  But I don't, for example, have
> any idea what would be a suitable lubricant to use - assuming the
> bearing isn't a totally sealed assembly itself....
> 
> ObOTness thread: the disk itself may be formally on-topic; it's
> certainly close to - it is stamped "MAR 31 1996".

I've done it before, but I find it's not usually worth it, unless you 
can't access data on the drive, and you really need that data.  I'd say 
if that drive is still working, find an identical drive and dd the data 
over.

The drive is nowhere near as valuable as the data, at least for newish 
drives.

Peace...  Sridhar