hi hddgurus

i am so glad to have found this forum- i believe there is hope at last to save my precious pictures

i have been reading, no studying this forum over the last few days and am nearly ready to attempt the head stack swtich on a seagate barracuda 7200.7 160GB.

I have been practicing on old HDDs, and realize that I still have a ways to go...

so my question to the experts is regarding spinning when unloading the heads- turning by hand doesn't seem to be fast enough. if i give the spindle a good twirl, i can move the headstack pretty freely but just for a short second or so. when just spinning a little i hear the heads rubbing on the platters. is that a problem? do i need to get a lot of momentum? how do you do it?

one more question too please- how important is it to keep the heads from touching each other- and why? i haven't found that they stick to each other. the straw trick seems pretty difficult, there being almost no room for error... what considerations are there for plastic (or paper?) touching the platters?

regards, brandon