Hard drive window? Yep, I am insane. *Made another w/LED* PICS!

Evadman · Post by **Evadman** » Fri Aug 09, 2002 10:14 pm

One hard drive window coming right up!

It is a 1.2 gig WD hard drive. I cut out the raised section from the top and put in a window. Yes, I was bored today.

Link to a pic

Works fine. I formatted and coppied over a bunch of MP3's and played them without a problems. If you have more ?'s please post 'em so I can anser them.

Evadman · Post by **Evadman** » Sat Aug 10, 2002 11:08 pm

nexus_7 · Post by **nexus_7** » Sat Aug 10, 2002 11:17 pm

thats some slick stuff man!

Greg

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Mon Aug 12, 2002 2:10 am

Wow!

But does it still work? Nice you left the tape around the side to aviod vioding the warrunty just in case

Or was that a pic before it was apart?

Anyway, it's a neat trick mod there. now if you can mount it on edge so it shows through a case window
that will be cool to watch running.

Would be neat to fragment alot and watch it seek, then defrag it and SEE what difference it made!

Looks like you made two, do they both work still?

How did you cut the case out? Is that a clear silicone holding in the plexi or did you add screws too to hold it in?

I've got some old 260mg and 850mg drives that work, I might try that latter on one of them. Any advice? Had any problems yet?

canton_kid

Evadman · Post by **Evadman** » Mon Aug 12, 2002 11:54 pm

Absolutely no problems with eiter yet. I actually sold the first one to a collector of wierd stuff

I have had the LED one running, with a few power cycles to liven things up. No breakdowns yet.

How:
I cut the case out with a dremmel with a cut off wheel and a sander. The sanding took the longest time. I wanted it to be super smooth so no dirt could be hiding in the crvices when I re-installed the cover. Clear silicone is holding in the plexi.

Advice:

don't do an LED unless you can surface mount it. It was a pain trying to make it small enough so it would fit without touching the platter. unfortunately, I missed by a little, and a bit of the silicone touched the platter about 1/32 of an inch from the outside edge. It is far enough out so the heads never come close, but it left a ring on the platter.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Aug 13, 2002 6:36 am

No reason it shouldn't work. You can run a hard drive with the cover off - for a while anyway. Fun to watch.

HOWEVER, what will happen now that the drve is contaminated, is that sooner or later some spec of dust that got in there when it was opened will get jammed between the heads and the platter and cause a disk crash.

A matter of statistics though - it could happen tomorrow or it could take 2 years. The cleaner he kept the air while working on it the better.

Nice mod!

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Tue Aug 13, 2002 4:34 pm

In the event of a dust caused crash, can that be fixed or will it just totall the drive?

I've got old unused drives 260meg and up I may try it with here later, but this is extremely dusty area off a dirt road! Have to build some type clean room/area for sure or I'll crash the first minute from dust here!

Thought this would be a good education piece for those that say WOW you installed or own modem!!

Course I won't trust em with anything important!!

Any problem with running an old 260mb with a new 60gig? Like ATA 1 and ATA 133??

Canton_kid

Evadman · Post by **Evadman** » Tue Aug 13, 2002 4:53 pm

Any problem with running an old 260mb with a new 60gig? Like ATA 1 and ATA 133??

Don't run them on the same cable.

ClockerDude · Post by **ClockerDude** » Sun Sep 08, 2002 2:27 am

WOW! That sure is some nice work! Looks like it would go well with a case window hack...if mounted vertically in the case, anyway. Also, whats so insane about putting windows on old HDs? From what I can see, people have been doing it for ages now. What i would REALLY like to do though, would be to grab one of those old "pizza box" Macintoshes, cut out most of the lid, glue a sheet of plexi-glass into the hole, take the lid off the HD, and then put the lid on and go to use it as normal. Operating HDs are soo pretty when they're fully exposed.

Pugsley · Post by **Pugsley** » Sun Sep 08, 2002 1:55 pm

Ok... everybody has been doing this wiht older HDs and so far no problems with it working. But, Has anybody done it to a drive that has a use? say and 80gig or somthin? I have a 10 gig i tore apart and i dont think a window would work. from what i can gather, it uses light and a piece of polarizing glass to tell the posistion of the head, and when outside light gets in it gets all confused. I dont know if the newer drives work like this, but if they do then a window will shurley destroy it.

ClockerDude · Post by **ClockerDude** » Sun Sep 08, 2002 10:39 pm

Eeeek. I don't really know anything about new drives not liking light, but unless you just have a dirty lens on your camera, i can imagine that it wouldn't really like all that dust in there too much...

Pugsley · Post by **Pugsley** » Mon Sep 09, 2002 9:33 pm

na, that drive was dead before i took it apart, and has been sitting around for a year.

Karchiveur · Post by **Karchiveur** » Tue Sep 17, 2002 9:47 pm

Hey Nice Mod!!!

Can U e-mail me a How To:
for that plz?

kuzjordan@hotmail.com

thx,

PCA Forums

Hard drive window? Yep, I am insane. Made another w/LED PICS!

Hard drive window? Yep, I am insane. Made another w/LED PICS!