The latest drives to fall victim to my screwdriver are 4 of these 9 GB IBM SCSI drives. These drives actually contained the first incarnation of radinfo and were pulled out of the Dell server that served as radinfo for about 5 years. These drives date back to 1999 as can be seen on the label.
It’s a much larger drive than modern ones and pretty hefty. There are 24 screws that need to be removed for complete disassembly.
One odd thing I noticed was this large capacitor that didn’t seem to be electrically connected to anything on the board (at least I couldn’t see any traces leading from where the capacitor was soldered onto the board).
Once the cover is removed, this is what you see inside. 10 platters worth of magnetic storage.
These are the read/write heads
A close-up of the read/write heads
And here’s what I’m really after: the magnets. These are really, really big magnets with a very powerful field. You do not want these snapping together with body parts anywhere nearby. For a size comparison I’ve placed them next to the magnets from the 2.5″ 60 GB drive.
With 8 of these big magnets on my workbench now, I have to be careful where I put them and to not let them get too close to each other.
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