Grease a harddrive?

FocusedWolf

I found this: <a href="http://www.salvationdata.com/blog/articles011906/" target="_blank">http://www.salvationdata.com/blog/articles011906/</a>

Anyone think this is a joke, or actually serious instructions? The part about rubbing grease over the platters just seems a little odd :P

zimzum

naw, it's serious. I recommend you follow those instructions for your personal pc, your parents and those of your closest friends. although, I would question his choice in grease brands and would suggest a large rubber mallet so as to not scratch the metal.

Kouji_San

Yelling at your hard drive also works! It will then cower inside the computer case, trying to keep quiet out of fear of another yelling session...

Chris0132

Mineral oil maybe, immersing the drive in any non-conductive non-abraisive dense substance with good heat conduction ability would increase the cooling efficiency of the components compared to having the computer running in air, as well as damping the sound a bit because increased mass being moved = reduced distance to move = reduced volume of sound produced. I wouldn't just take the HDD to bits and start putting WD40 on everything.

[WHO]Them

That is most definitely a gag.


Also....

<!--quoteo(post=1771836:date=May 21 2010, 09:24 AM:name=Kouji_San)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Kouji_San @ May 21 2010, 09:24 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1771836"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yelling at your hard drive also works! It will then cower inside the computer case, trying to keep quiet out of fear of another yelling session...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4</a>

X_Stickman

Sometimes my (relatively) expensive keyboard stops working (well, a set pattern of keys on the right side of it stop working) and punching it fixes it.

I'm not sure how it fixes it, but it does. For weeks. Then it breaks again and another punch sorts it for another few weeks.

zimzum

oddly enough, that same technique works with my son.

X_Stickman

Maybe your son is a logitech G11 keyboard. What does his mother look like? Is she QWERTY or DVORAK?

zimzum

definitely dvorak, she's an odd one.

Kouji_San

<!--quoteo(post=1772091:date=May 24 2010, 03:28 PM:name=[WHO]Them)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ([WHO]Them @ May 24 2010, 03:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1772091"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
That is most definitely a gag.


Also....



<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ya, but that's not a fair battle. They outnumber the guy, gotta love the airflow systems in server parks :D

Mr. Epic

works great! Its as effective at reducing sound as using sandpaper to remove scratches from your monitor.

Cereal_KillR

Sorry for spoiling in on all the fun here (even though the sarcasm was blatant) but just in case someone does in fact believe this is possible:

Hard drives are precision mechanisms. The atmosphere within a hard disk is controlled. In fact, special drives are used for operation at high or low pressure environments. The reason for this is because the reading head of a hard disk needs to be positioned very precisely to read the data on the magnetic plates. The atmosphere has to be controlled, because a change in temperature or pressure modifies the positioning of the head. A high enough disturbance results in contact between the head and the plate, which results in disk failure. That is why it is important to NOT COVER THE HOLES conveniently labeled "do not cover".

Back on this case: Let's suppose that this has been done in a clean room and not a garage (and by clean room, I mean the science-y ones, not a room recently vacuumed). Let's suppose that there has been no contaminants that fell on the plates, and the atmosphere within the drive has been preserved.
Grease is heavy and thick. Drives rotate at a minimum speed of 5,400rpm nowadays. Most go at 7,200rpm and some go at 10k or more. That's very fast. Going this fast means that planarity needs to be very high, and any imbalance on the plate can result in a wobbly spinning pattern which will necessarily result in a scratch. That's the same reason you don't put stickers on CD's. And in any case, even if the drives were slow, the head wouldn't even move properly within the grease and that would result in eventual scratches and failure as well.



The main reason drives are so loud is that they resonate within a case. The best way to make a drive silent is by suspending it or using silicon pads on the screw holes, for example.