Re: What can be done to preserve a working vintage HDD?

My how time flies! It's nice that in the 5 years since I posted this thread we now have the excellent Basic Lisa Utility to low level format Widgets and ProFiles.

So I fired up my ProFile for the first time in about a year... the bearings are very unhappy. I left the drive upside down for 30 minutes running, until there was a great screeching noise. It subsided after a few seconds, but I don't want to take my chances and have the bearing cease or fail, ruining the otherwise working disk.

What options are there for getting some oil into that bearing? Without taking the spindle and platter out the only thing I can think to try would be submerging the whole thing in oil.

Here's what the underside of a ST506 looks like with the circuit boards removed: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/nNURgtRN8EDaVowcybKqN0rsISA2q3hI4TvI4moyoKg=w725-h963-no

If I removed the side mounting brackets and their rubber isolators then dipped the "front" of the disk into a container of oil such that the level comes up to the bearing could oil get to the bearing?

If someone has a totally failed ST506 they could take apart to see how the motor is arranged I'd be interested in some pictures, or would pay for shipping to Virginia.

Thanks,

-J

On Sunday, October 31, 2010 at 10:05:54 PM UTC-4, compu_85 wrote:
>
> I'm fortunate (lucky?) enough to have a working Widget disk in my
> 2/10, and a 5mb Profile as well. The Profile has no bad sectors
> currently, and after some initial troubles when I first got the
> machine going the widget has been flawless. I would like to keep both
> of these disks that way. Besides not moving the machine wile the disks
> are spinning, and running them periodically, are there any other
> measures I can take to ensure the disks will keep going? As I
> understand it both disks will eventually loose their control tracks
> and quit working because of loss of magnetism. I saw that happen
> frequently years ago with the MiniScribe disks in Mac SEs, but those
> were easy to low level format.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Jason
>
>

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