Jinx <joecolquitt@CLEAR.NET.NZ> said:

> If I may quote from Scott Mueller's vast tome "Upgrading And
> Repairing PCs"
>
> "Many PC users think that hard drives are fragile, and generally
> they are one of the most fragile components in the PC. In my
> weekly PC Hardware and Troubleshooting or Data Recovery
> seminars, however, I have run various hard disks for days with
> the lids off, and have even removed and installed the covers
> while the drives were operating. Those drives continue to store
> data perfectly to this day with the lids either on or off. Of course
> I do not recommend that you try this with your own drives ; neither
> would I use it on my larger, more expensive, drives"

Quite true.

I used to work on mainframes for a living.  Work on, as in with scope and
wrenches.  The old drives were routinely run for hours exposed to room air
while servicing.  When the drive is spinning, the surface wind is sufficient
to keep dust from landing on the platters anyway.  Granted this was with
2400RPM 10-platter IBM 2314's - yeah, I'm old, but not THAT old, it was an
Army system - but things have not gotten too much worse since.

Dale

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