ESD Equipment/Clean Room setups

[beardyone]

Hi All,

What kind of ESD equipment does everyone here tend to use, wrist straps, mats etc? And what kind of clean room set ups does anyone have? Masks, overalls etc?

Just trying to get an idea and some suggestions as to some good equipment and suppliers if anyone fancies sharing.

Cheers

[BlackST]

Call a consultant and tell him you want to start a dr business. He will build a project for you and arrange everything. Time saving.

[beardyone]

Thanks BlackST.

I am already in the DR business I was just looking for best practice ideas to try and eliminate any possible factors that could cause a job to fail.

For example, personally i have not noticed any marked difference in success rates whether i am using an ESD wrist strap or not wearing it (sometimes i forget to put it on ). I do not use a face mask when i am working under our laminar flow bench yet i still have a good success rate with head swaps/platter swaps etc.

Show of hands maybe, who gets fully kitted in their HazMat suits before attempting physical repair work? Anyone have any success stories doing headswaps in the kitchen while eating toast?

[lostinspace]

I did a head swap on a WD3200AAJS in my bedroom while watching Neighbours one evening. It worked too.

Before everyone gets started, no it was not a customer's drive

[beardyone]

lol. It must have been an episode without Anne Wilkinson in it. I don't think I could concentrate on anything else while she was on the screen. (Lance Wilkinson's sister if anyone is having trouble remembering her, she had fantastic....er....'eyes' )

Anyway, that kind of leads to another question. Is a massive investment in clean rooms, ESD equipment, decontamination showers and remote controlled robotic platter removal jigs (we have one, don't you?! ) neccessary?

Say i did 100 head swaps in a clean room environment and 100 headswaps on my desk would i notice a massive difference in success rates? Personally i think care, experience and good method is more important than a perfect clean air environment. Just my opinion, i always use the clean room in our premises, but just throwing the question out there.

[HDD Spaz]

If you have a clean room why ask the question? Sounds like you have been operating without one and your success rate is not as high as it should be.

[beardyone]

If you have a clean room why ask the question? Sounds like you have been operating without one and your success rate is not as high as it should be.

Because if no one ever asked questions Chris Tarrant would be out of a job and Deal or No Deal would be considerably more boring than it is at the moment. Everyone would open their boxes straight away and go home with whatever they have got.

[HDD Spaz]

I have two good working legs. I walk very well. If I was to lose one leg in the future, would I be able to walk just as fast? I would like to point out I have two legs and have no intention of losing one in the near future.

A lot of people would probably agree that this is quite a pointless quetion.

If I was to say..

I've got one leg, should I get another one to have two legs, will I be able to walk faster?

This makes more sense. You understand what I mean?

ps. I am basically saying your question is pointless and a waste of time.

[beardyone]

Then why bother replying. Now I know why you are a spaz mr one leg!

[HDD Spaz]

OUCH! My insides are now on the floor thanks to your extremely sharp wit.

If I was you I would get a clean tank, you might have more success running your cowboy operation. YE HA!

[beardyone]

Apologies Mr. Spaz. A work colleague jumped on my PC and posted playground tittle tattle This thread is causing quite a stir in my little bedroom based DR company with no clean room

Fair point well made HDDSpaz. I think.

Lets assume i have 2 legs (a clean room). Lets assume someone else only has 1 leg (no clean room). Would the additional investment in an artificial leg replacement for the man with 1 leg justify the increase in success rate? (should he buy a clean room environment costing £thousands when the improvement in success rate is 5-10%. How long before that investment is realised...years? months? depending on volume)

When i was training and completing head swaps on donor drives on my desk i had a high success rate, from memory i would say my success rate since i started using the clean room consistently is not that different.

[beardyone]

Double Post

Basically. Would my one legged man walk faster if he had a clean room with ESD protection?

Or in simpler terms. Do most of the gurus here use ESD protection and ESD safe tools or do they get by without?

[lostinspace]

Double Post

Basically. Would my one legged man walk faster if he had a clean room with ESD protection?

Or in simpler terms. Do most of the gurus here use ESD protection and ESD safe tools or do they get by without?

I don't know. But I do remember Ann Wilkinson and I'd have f**ked her too

[HDD Spaz]

I quite fancied helen daniels. I am either showing my age or I am a bit sick.

I estimate that a clean room improves recovery rate around 10 - 15%. It depends on what disk you are working on.

I use ESD mats and wrist bands which seem good enough.

[beardyone]

Mrs Mangel was more my thang. Mmmmm.

Thanks for the reply HDDSpaz. We have mats and ESD wrist straps and we purchased a number of ESD tweezers as well but found that they were absolutely crap so not many of our guys use them anymore. I would say that our ESD straps dont get used every single time either.

Maybe we should start penalising people for not using the ESD equipment over the next month and see if our recovery rate jumps up significantly. Be interesting to see.

[HDD_MASTER]

I personally think the clean room issue can be very over rated. data recovery is designed to get the drive working for a period long enough to secure data. Worrying about microscopic infiltrations is purely for pussies

[beardyone]

If i was a lady and my pussie had a microscopic infiltration i would be less than pleased! fnar fnar.

Ahhh....the 5.20pm post when i am ready to go home. sorry for lowering the tone.

[HDD_MASTER]

Id get some yoghurt for it if I were you

[BlackST]

Sorry but I don't get the purpose of the original post : if you are working well without the hi-tech gizmos, continue that way because it's you that make the difference. Otherwise, save the money.
I am more hardware oriented so I invested more on test equipment like .... no, not complexes : I mean oscilloscopes, logic analyzers etc. etc. .
ESD is something like an opinion.... I never damaged anything but maybe it's because of my habits : I have a wooden bench, I discharge myself on a grounding point and I don't wear anything like polyester or similar. My test / solder / desolder equipment is grounded and I have done the grounding and checked it. The general ground line is checked. The power line is galvanically separated by isolation transformer, everything works.
And, of course, opened drives are meant to work only for the amount of time needed to recover data. Period.

[drc]

When i was training and completing head swaps on donor drives on my desk i had a high success rate, from memory i would say my success rate since i started using the clean room consistently is not that different.

Sounds like you've answered your own question then.