i found this dead 5 gig hard drive in the halls of MIT, free for the taking. this summer, my hard drive crashed, out of the blue (as they do, i’ve learned), and i lost stuff. some of it that stuff i’d really like to get back. but i won’t.
i was curious as to what makes these things that we depend on so much in our digital lives tick. i knew from my attempts to recover, or have recovered, my dead drive that the mechanical bits are hermetically sealed to keep out dust and that you have to pay someone hundreds of dollars (or more) to go in there and try and get your data if you should have a mechanical failure. apparently they do this in some sort of clean room: the ICU for things digital and precious. i didn’t take it that far and chose instead to let some of that data go, in a take a deep breath, walk away, kind of way… so this experience has been therapeutic, i’d say.
there she is... seagate medalist 6422... 6,400mbytes, 5400 rpm, circa 2000?
this is the circuit side of the drive
this the extent of the electronics side of the thing.
cracking the cover… a few hidden screws
first glimpse at the disk
popping the sealed chamber reveals the plates… shiny. (these things spin at 5400 rpm. they’re about 3″ in diameter, so if they were wheels on a car, the car would be going about 60mph.)
this drive has two plates stacked. i love this image because it suggests shelves – a library. (a somewhat hokey analogy, but you get the point)
this is the arm that holds the little head which actually floats above the plate while it’s spinning on a bed of air. if it touches the plate, it can scratch it and ruin the data contained on that shiny magnetic surface. crazy.
i won’t wax overly philosophical about this one.
the arm that holds the drive head is sandwiched between two strong magnets. a small coil loop allows the thing to move back and forth through induction. really fast and really precise.
head reader arm and mechanical/electronic interface. this thing is precision engineered to be sealed inside a dark, spotless metal box. what strikes me is how beautiful an object it kindof is.
this is as far as i could take it without breaking things. on the right of the body are the mechanical components, on the left, the digital ones.
Here’s video of a hard drive in action, with the cover off:
