Anyone interested in pics of a Sider drive teardown? I am going to be cleaning and inspecting a Sider 10megger that came from a mill. There is an incredible amount of dust all over it. But, it seems the dust and sawdust has formed a nice protective barrier. Because upon cleaning everything looks to be absolutely pristine! Everything's gonna get a nice bath and scrubbing. I'm also going to replace the breather filters (if needed) and stuff like that.
This is gonna be my 3rd drive, and I don't mind it if for some strange reason I can't get it back together again, but that's not likely as all this vintage stuff is simple to repair.
Fantastic
Pictures with teardown/rebuild description would be great.
Well the drive is working perfectly. It passes an all-day-long surface certification. So this would be a "take pictures as I put it back together" thing. Parts just are too dirty to handle comfortably. Stuff is going through the dishwasher first!
I have a trick I've used on a number of drives. I call it my ghetto cleanroom. I go into the bathroom with my Sharper Image ionic breeze air ionizer and let it run with increased humidity from the shower. Just a little, not the swirling steam clouds or anything like that. Just a 10 second blast.
Then you can open up a hard disk (even a modern day disk) without fear of dust contaminants. My other trick is to work upside down. This means you suspend the drive from the shower bar, using screws in the mount holes and some fishing line. With the drive upside down there is little chance of dust getting to the platters. With the air slightly more humid, fine particles tend to clump together, get heavy and fall. They ain't gonna making U-turns and attaching to the platters. And there is no static in the air to instigate that either.
I've done this with a number of modern high density 500GB drives. Mainly for cutting up the Denny's carry-out containers and building makeshift clear windows to see inside. None of these have failed in 2 years of operation. And they look cool.
So if I have to open up the drive for any reason I can do so. But it has passed tests and there's no need to tear into the platters.