The only repair I've ever done: platter screw came loose

[mmmmna]

I once had a 320 meg Seagate that was a free gift because it had stopped working. The original owner complained it squeaked loudly, so he immediately powered the system down and brought it to the repair shop. The system never booted for the repair company. They can't fix it. New hard disk for the original customer, and I got the dead drive.

In my dining room (normal household dust, not a laminar flow hood), I opened the drive case, saw that one of the 6 platter ring clamping screws was backed out a long way. I looked at the inside of the drive cover: the screw had contacted the cover, but the cover was barely scuffed up. I took a chance that there were no particles inside the hard disks case. I re-tightened the platter ring screw, replaced the cover onto the drive, and hit it with power. Spun right up.

I put the drive into my 486 PC, the drive booted. I formatted the drive, installed Windows 95, and I used that drive for over 2 years. It still boots in a different 486 system, 8 years after I tightened the platter ring screw, but it now has some bad sectors.

[dobrevjetser]

In those days drives were not so sensitive to dust. Good for you.

Dobre

[mmmmna]

Was wondering - does that loose screw thing happen often?

[pepe]

Hi,

once I bought a brand new SP0411N Samsung drive from a distributor to use as a donor. As I disassembled it I noticed that one of the screws holding the magnet in position was almost entirely screwed out. Again, this was a brand new one.
Another piece of HW was a WD200EB I bought as defective. It had horrible sound.
As I removed the cover, I noticed the platter is slightly bent
Removed the platter... Then I saw that again one of the screws holding the motor was gone and made an impact with the platter...

these were my cases.
pepe

[rameez]

I dont understand one thing how do the screw get loose .

[pepe]

Perhaps it was never tightened enough...

[mmmmna]

Perhaps it was never tightened enough...

Probably not tightened enough!
If the total sum of all loose screws is 1 in each 300,000 hard disk drives, that is a very useful and favorable failure rate (compared to automobiles). Me, I've had almost 50 hard disk drives, one loose screw seems to be all I've ever had. As for other problems, only platter spindle bearings (2 disk drives) and platter surface defects (3 disk drives) were more prevalent. The only other failure I've ever had was when I managed to plug in a power cable upside down... cooked the circuit board.