"David V. Fansler" said: > I expect you are not going to have much luck. The inside of a drive is > hermetically sealed in a clean room. The head of a hard drive is cushioned > above the platter by the air flow created by the platter spinning. A piece > of dust is several times thicker than the gap, and will cause you to have > another crash. All correct. And I agree that he probably won't have much luck. I will say, however, that I have had many, many drives open for repair and platter replacements in relatively clean but not "clean-room" conditions. All survived fine; in fact, many continued to run for several years without problems afterward. Granted these were ST2xx drives with somewhat higher head altitudes, but I've done some newer 3.5" drives as well. None have crashed from dust or other foreign matter... you just have to be very, very careful of what you're doing. > To me one of the best cost/performance tape drive around is the OnStream > units. Never had a problem with the dozen or so I have used. I like mirrored drives a heck of a lot better. I've had tape media problems as well as other (ahem, "operator headspace") issues. I also never need to remember to swap out a mirror drive... but I could if I needed off-site backup storage. Dale -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu