Scared...Hard drive modification

M

Mickelonis

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 8, 2005
Messages
203
Ok so PDXLAN is happening soon and I want to go in style.

So here was my idea...

I have two Raptor drives.... My concept was to have the cover of the drive replaced with a 100% acrylic cover. Thus, you can see everything inside.

Well, I took the cover off my drive.

I took as many precautions as I could. I work in a hospital and I know the surgery folks, so I got sterile gloves, hats, bags, face masks, the works...

I did the work in the back of a server room where there is little to no dust at all. I moved very slowly and with the help of a co-worker, I took the cover off my drive and stored the drive in an ESD bag, 'and' a sterile bag I got from surgery.

I then shipped the hard drive lid out to Danger Den and they are working on getting me a replica made of acrylic (they rock).

God I hope this works, and keeps working once put back together... =) If it doesn't, well.... Then I can say I tried....

=)


-Pete
 
I would've found a donor drive to send the lid to DangerDen for duplication. Then, when the new lid comes in, swap em out real quick on the good drive.
 
I would LOVE to do that, but I can't for the life of me find a dead drive.... If anyone on here wants to donate a drive (I pay shipping) then I would love you forever....
 
well more than likely, i hate to say, you will end up running into problems because the drives are actually assembled in clean rooms. I know you understand what this means as you work in a hospital. Hopefully you will get lucky and have no mal affects from the exchange but more than likely you will run into some sort of problem. Hate to be the barer of bad news but GL.
 
Hmmm, kinda risky leaving it in there so long. Ah well. See you are pdxlan if i ever get this digg case done.
 
I had a 30gb drive I took the cover off of and had it running for quite a while.

I put it back on though because I put it in a small case with lots of wires.

People are getting over paranoid about dust I think.
 
I have taken the cover off a few old drives just for the fun of it. All have worked after replacing the cover. I think your chances are at least 80%. Better if you're careful.
Ribs
 
ribs1 said:
I have taken the cover off a few old drives just for the fun of it. All have worked after replacing the cover. I think your chances are at least 80%. Better if you're careful.
Ribs
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the whole "one speck of dust and its dead" is crazy talk.

1 spec of dust and at worst that cluster is dead, so you might lose a couple megabyte once you OS marks it was a bad do not write to cluster. I would still be careful as hell thou as 1 speck of dust may not kill it, but theres alot of damn dust in the world......
 
I spoke with DangerDen today, and they confirmed they recieved the hard drive cover and the 'concept' image from me. They said they feel that they can create the cover however no garauntees it works (that's obvious, if it fails, it's my problem not theirs... Hard drives were not meant to be opened).

So good news is, they feel good about creating the cover =)

I will post pics after I recieve the covers and have them on my hard drives (I'm doing two raptors in RAID-0).

I do understand the drives are created in clean rooms which is why I worked with all sterile supplies while the drives were opened. After I took the cover off, I was told by the laser lab that I could have used their clean room to do this... Nice they told me 'after' I removed the cover from the drive!!! I most likely will be using their clean room to re-assemble the drive.

To be honest, if I was taking this hard drive apart in my bedroom with a carpet and all the dust in a standard home, I would imagine my success rate would be 40%. However, seeing as the drastic precautions I am taking, I think and HOPE I will be more like the 80%-90% success rate but this opinion means nothing. I have never opened a drive and expected it to still work before.

If this mission is a success, this will be saweet =) I will post pics when I get the cover from DangerDen.

BTW: Props to DangerDen for even thinking of taking on this type of project. That goes above and beyond in my book. I would suggest them to anyone!

Again, I promise to post pics when I get this all back from DD. I imagine it will be a few days.

-Pete
 
Sounds like you'll be ok.

Even then, I strongly suggest sacrificing a small woodland animal... just, you know... for the added protection... and stuff.
 
I think a moose would suffice.

Damn, how much does something like that cost :eek:


I want to see the finished product. Maybe DD could start sending out modded raptors, that would be cool.
 
I can see a real problem with this. If you think about the dust hitting the platter on a 7200 drive it can cause damage due to the huge impact speeds. Now think about a speck of dust hitting a platter spinning at 10000rpm. When the drive is closed it is also slightly pressurised, this helps to maintain the head distance from the platter and keep things consistant.

Also doesn't acrylic create static?
 
Yeah wasn't the big deal with the Raptor X that they were using some fancy static dissipating acrylic which wouldn't nuke the drive ? Also won't it get really hot since acrylic is an insulator of heat rather than a conductor ?

Sorry for the negativity
 
I think you will do fine, Hopefully you put the good drive in the sterile bag and then the esd bag. It doesnt have to be a clean room that you are working in, just clean enough. I think you will be victorious in your quest.
 
Jay_oasis said:
I can see a real problem with this. If you think about the dust hitting the platter on a 7200 drive it can cause damage due to the huge impact speeds. Now think about a speck of dust hitting a platter spinning at 10000rpm. When the drive is closed it is also slightly pressurised, this helps to maintain the head distance from the platter and keep things consistant.

Also doesn't acrylic create static?
Click to expand...

mashie said:
Drives are not pressureized, ever seen that little hole with the text "Do not cover" next to it? Inside that hole is a 1/8" air filter.
Click to expand...

QFT and adding a "Ya No Shit!" And besides, how in the hell would air pressure help to keep the heads a certain distance from the platters? High School Physics......

OK, the big deal about opening a drive is you just lowered the MTBF. Take your normal precautions as you would on any hard drive that contained data and keep it backed up regularly.
 
Drives cant be pressurized because when they get warm they air expands so they would bust thats why the hole with the air filter is there is so that it can relieve pressure.
 
mashie said:
Regarding MTBF, it's bad enough to run RAID0 on stock drives, to run it on modded drives is just begging for dataloss. Go for RAID1 if anything.
Click to expand...

Guys, seriously, before telling someone to run a mirror set up, lets think, is he running because he wants faster performance on a BOOT drive? Highly likely. You dont buy Raptors because you want data storage, you buy them because you want speed. If you have 2, you run RAID0 and set it up as a boot drive. FAST. If you have 3 then run RAID5 that way you have some kind of protection. RAID1 is just plain dumb to me as an end user. If you are actually worried about data loss, back it up. End of story, we have dual layer dvd, we have hd dvd, we have bluray, we even have old school tape back ups. I personally had dual raptors in RAID0, I moved to 4 200gig SATAII drives, faster, more space. I run RAID5, I can lose a drive and be fine. Its when I lose more than one that I get a little freaked about LOL. :) ;) :cool:
 
mashie said:
What good is it to run RAID 0 considering a modded HDD can fail at any time? Been there, done that. If you want a fast boot drive it is just stupid to run any kind of RAID at all since you will increase the search latancy a lot and bootup isn't about reading one huge sequential file but lots and lots of small files. My gaming PCs use single Raptors since the day they released the 74GB model, now the 150s keeps me happy. As for RAID 5, it has been running for years in my fileserver, currently it has 8 x 200GB and never had a single drive fail or fall out of the array.
Click to expand...

Your honestly trying to say that if you run RAID0 or RAID5 that you wont have faster read and write times? I fail to agree since, A - there is scientific proof as well as common sense that stripping is faster, and B - I have seen it. My roommate runs an 8 disk RAID6 300gig Sata array with a constant read/write speed of 280ish mb/s - you cant tell me your raptor 150 goes that fast. RAID0 is faster than RAID5 because the processor doesn't have to do any of the parody operations. RAID0/5/6 is just faster. Your latency is limited to the types of drives, not to the number. RAID1 has its uses, however, in a gaming machine, where your building for speed, and using RAPTOR DRIVES which are small to begin with you use RAID0 or 5. Honestly, if your going to spend 250 dollars on a hard drive and you want storage, are you going to get the 74/150 or are you going to buy a 500 gig hd? We all understand that RAID0 is better for data protection, but we aren't running any mission critical systems, and I highly doubt that our little thread starter isn't. They are just like us, they want fast read/write times. Do the math, get in the know. Speed = RAID0/5/6 - data protection = RAID0 - but remember in RAID0 you can have 8 200 gig HD's but you will still only have 800 gigs of data storage instead of 1.6 TB.

And in response to the question "What good is RAID0 when the drive can fail at anytime?" Heres your answer - ANY DRIVE CAN FAIL AT ANYTIME. There are no guarantees, that is what Manufacturer's warranty's are for. And just like everyone said, the mod is no big deal, he took the proper precautions. If you want to be a little more careful, set up your RAID - be it 0 5 6 or 1, then when installing Winders, do a full format. Once it is installed, run chkdsk from a command line, you will findout if you have any bad sectors, and windows will label them as such and not use them. Spec's of dust aren't going to creat craters in your platters.

Before everyone starts giving B.S. advice, which mashie, your's is not B.S. - it is legit - RAID1 is good for data back up - his drives are just too small for it to matter, im talking about the latter craters and the pressurized hd's and things like that - anyway - before you guys give this BS advice - know WTF your talking about, do a little research, and stop sounding like a fool. HD's aren't pressurized, dust isn't going to cause some creepy nuclear meltdown in your hd - and little gnomes aren't stealing your socks from the dryer, everyone knows, the dryer gets hungry.
 
Endrithius said:
-snip-
...and little gnomes aren't stealing your socks from the dryer, everyone knows, the dryer gets hungry.
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Not I!! :( I didn't know this. No wonder I can never find my socks.
 
Mashie,

How long did the drives in your Y2K-bug custom case last? Are they still running?

-Pete
 
Endrithius said:
Guys, seriously, before telling someone to run a mirror set up, lets think, is he running because he wants faster performance on a BOOT drive? Highly likely. You dont buy Raptors because you want data storage, you buy them because you want speed.
Click to expand...

properly set up, read performance on raid-1 is the same as raid-0.
it seems that this is irrelevant to your argument, sacrifice half the storage, double the reliability, or the other way around, write speed would be roughly half set up as raid-1 but for gaming that doesn't really matter, you write small files and read tons of big ones.

but it's really not a huge deal raid-0 would be fine, if a drive failed an hour or two would be lost setting up your system again on the working drive, not a big deal for gaming.

dust isn't what kills hard drives. heads randomly smacking into platters kill hard drives, it happened to me earlier this week, and I can assure you it is random.
 
BillthePlayerPawn said:
properly set up, read performance on raid-1 is the same as raid-0.
it seems that this is irrelevant to your argument, sacrifice half the storage, double the reliability, or the other way around, write speed would be roughly half set up as raid-1 but for gaming that doesn't really matter, you write small files and read tons of big ones.

but it's really not a huge deal raid-0 would be fine, if a drive failed an hour or two would be lost setting up your system again on the working drive, not a big deal for gaming.

dust isn't what kills hard drives. heads randomly smacking into platters kill hard drives, it happened to me earlier this week, and I can assure you it is random.
Click to expand...


Most of this is wrong.
 
can we get back ontopic and get some pics of the results of the OP's mod???
 
Yeah, what he said.

And I still haven't seen any prices shown either. I wanna know what they are charging for this.
 
Your honestly trying to say that if you run RAID0 or RAID5 that you wont have faster read and write times?
Click to expand...

He might not be... But I am.

Look at pretty much ANY benchmark on the internet for Raid0 over JBOD setups... Sure, their sequential read potential is pretty much doubled, but never equates to any REAL life performance gains. You're looking at like 5-10% difference... Tops. I went out and bought another 80gb drive to do the test myself, and was very dissapointed. I agree with your statement about BS... it's amazing how easily rumours can propagate.

Mashie, those drives look amazing... btw. GL OP.
 
I still haven't gotten the custom lids back from Danger Den. I will post pics ASAP after I get them. I will call them tomorrow (Thursday) during business hours to get an update.

-Pete
 
Not only are you opening and modifying a harddrive, you are going to use it in Suicide raid. I hope whatever data you put on there isn't important to you.
 
Update:

I just called DD, they have the CAD drawings completed, they are starting to actually cut the acrylic today.

EDIT - My formal statement: It's obvious that Danger Den sets prices, not me. If you want to know how much something like this would cost you, call them up and ask them if they are willing to do the work. (Realize that I had sent them the cover to my drive before I was quoted anything.) Personally I would have paid 100 bucks for this to get done and I imagine it would be worth it as well.

-Pete
 
Well, I want to stress that the price is not written in stone. It could be that DD will charge me more due to the nature of the work involved. It's unknown at this point.
 
Just got this in an email from DD:

Hi Pete,

I’ve got the hard drive cover done. Well, maybe not done, but there are some pieces ready for you to play with and see if you can make work. I also cut some neoprene pieces that may or may not be useful. (more pieces to play with J )

I’ll need a credit card or a paypal payment made for xxx and then I can ship it out to you.

Regards,

(name witheld)
Click to expand...

I called her up, paid her some money, and she sent the lids out. I might actually get them tomorrow =) Pics coming soon!

-Pete
 
That's not rude at all, because it was a good price.

Now if he woulda said $500, then I could see why he'd want to be quiet about it.
 
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