At one time, my Macintosh SE/30 and 10MB external disk drive was a very reliable system lasting my almost the duration of my college career. That is until one day when the external disk drive refused to mount. I opened the case removed the drive and smacked it a few times get the drive to ultimately spin up and mount on the desktop. This fix lasted about two weeks until no amount of smacking would cause it to spin up. I figured the bearings were shot and proceeded to open the actual drive mechanism to take a closer look. (I had backed up all the data since this was going to be a mechanical autopsy) I tried spinning the platter and noticed it had a little bit of initial friction but then rolled quite freely. I remounted the cover and attempted to start the drive and would you believe it actually started and mounted with no errors! This again lasted two weeks until once again I had a dead drive. Instead of going through the same autopsy, I simply left the power on and removed the drive cover giving the drive platter a little spin to help start it... the drive started spinning and I placed the cover back on the drive (no screws). For the next 2 months this was the method I used the start the drive... I called it "manual jump start"! The drive finally succumbed to dust and contaimination but it provided a very interesting sight to friends when I started it up!
Slashdot Mirror
At one time, my Macintosh SE/30 and 10MB external disk drive was a very reliable system lasting my almost the duration of my college career. That is until one day when the external disk drive refused to mount. I opened the case removed the drive and smacked it a few times get the drive to ultimately spin up and mount on the desktop. This fix lasted about two weeks until no amount of smacking would cause it to spin up. I figured the bearings were shot and proceeded to open the actual drive mechanism to take a closer look. (I had backed up all the data since this was going to be a mechanical autopsy) I tried spinning the platter and noticed it had a little bit of initial friction but then rolled quite freely. I remounted the cover and attempted to start the drive and would you believe it actually started and mounted with no errors! This again lasted two weeks until once again I had a dead drive. Instead of going through the same autopsy, I simply left the power on and removed the drive cover giving the drive platter a little spin to help start it... the drive started spinning and I placed the cover back on the drive (no screws). For the next 2 months this was the method I used the start the drive... I called it "manual jump start"! The drive finally succumbed to dust and contaimination but it provided a very interesting sight to friends when I started it up!