This is not to say that there are not clean rooms good enough, but certainly nobodys home or office type workplace is good enough.
That may be your experience, and I certainly wasn't recommending that people try it or saying that a drive should be expected to survive, I simply said that I have done it and successfully read back the data on the drive and I can imagine that others have got away with it too (and I have heard from some who have).
Your statement that "certainly nobodys home or office type workplace is good enough" is a little bit presumptious. That may have been your experience, but that doesn't mean it is true 100% of the time. Under some circumstances, some drives do survive for some amount of time. Certainly it depends on the drive and a lot of luck, but it can be done.
You could show over and over again by killing drives this way that "many homes or office type workplaces aren't good enough", but it only takes one successful, non-clean-room operation where the drive survives to disprove the theory that "nobody's home or workplace is good enough" and I have done so on more than one occasion.
I'll say again though, it isn't a good idea and you should only work on hard drives in a clean room environment, therefore DIY window-mods for hard drives in general are going to be a bad idea. That still doesn't mean it's not possible, just a very bad idea!!
There aren't any easy ways (yet) to show off your modded drive aside from leaving it sit outside the case hanging by cables... It would be cool though to see..... a series of drives..... containing windows..... assuming that someone comes up with a practical way of displaying the drives outside of the case
How about a completely transparent acrylic case? Such as this one?
I assure you, they exist, look half-way decent, if you're into that kind of thing, and some of the most boring components on display are the floppy drive and... the non-windowed hard drive!!
Btw, if you are into clear case mods and can see all the other moving/glowing parts of your PC, then this is a cool mod... but it's definitely not worth the risk!
Sure, a lot of people (myself included) have run old drives with the cover off when ready to chuck them anyway or in an emergency have opened a drive, repaired it and had it survive long enough to get the data off safely.
However, who would really want to do this to a new drive / void the warranty / shorten the drive's life expectancy, blah, blah, blah... ?
Instead, I wonder when major hard disk manufacturers will start releasing drives with a clear top cover option? It didn't take long when it came to case modding for clear panels (and fish tanks) to start appearing from the factory...
You're thinking of Western Australia.:p I'm still not convinced Perth actually exists. I mean, sure, it's on the maps, but when was the last time you ever heard anything about Perth on the news, or met anybody from Perth, or had Perth's existence validated in any other way?
Gee. I know that some of these guys [slashdot.meetup.com] would be pissed to read that!
In fact, have a look at this and I would say that Perth is the ONLY place in Australia that really exists in the world of Slashdot!
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds to me like the unique serial number thing that was available in Intel P2/P3 chips....
Whatever happened to those?
Processor Serial Number Feature = Disabled
It was a BIOS option on *most* boards as I recall...
...throw me your McMedia Player and I'll get you the next instalment!
If *I* get a Google job, I am never leaving!
So easy to say about a company until you have actually worked there.
So easy to say about a company until they point out that the decision is theirs and not yours!
Your statement that "certainly nobodys home or office type workplace is good enough" is a little bit presumptious. That may have been your experience, but that doesn't mean it is true 100% of the time. Under some circumstances, some drives do survive for some amount of time. Certainly it depends on the drive and a lot of luck, but it can be done.
You could show over and over again by killing drives this way that "many homes or office type workplaces aren't good enough", but it only takes one successful, non-clean-room operation where the drive survives to disprove the theory that "nobody's home or workplace is good enough" and I have done so on more than one occasion.
I'll say again though, it isn't a good idea and you should only work on hard drives in a clean room environment, therefore DIY window-mods for hard drives in general are going to be a bad idea. That still doesn't mean it's not possible, just a very bad idea!!
I assure you, they exist, look half-way decent, if you're into that kind of thing, and some of the most boring components on display are the floppy drive and... the non-windowed hard drive!!
Done!
Btw, if you are into clear case mods and can see all the other moving/glowing parts of your PC, then this is a cool mod... but it's definitely not worth the risk!
Sure, a lot of people (myself included) have run old drives with the cover off when ready to chuck them anyway or in an emergency have opened a drive, repaired it and had it survive long enough to get the data off safely.
However, who would really want to do this to a new drive / void the warranty / shorten the drive's life expectancy, blah, blah, blah... ?
Instead, I wonder when major hard disk manufacturers will start releasing drives with a clear top cover option? It didn't take long when it came to case modding for clear panels (and fish tanks) to start appearing from the factory...
In fact, have a look at this and I would say that Perth is the ONLY place in Australia that really exists in the world of Slashdot!