On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, cdb wrote:

> The motors may spin and the arm may dash about, but will your data
> still be easily readable without specialist recovery techniques?
>
> Possibly not - the thing about the clean room environment is NO DUST
> - at 5200RPM + and the height or lack of it of the heads from the
> platters - a speck of dust would cause similar damage to the platters
> as a speck of dust hitting a space craft.

At 5200RPM (or 3600, 7200 or 10K) dust won't land on the platters to begin
with.  The heads are spring loaded, and THEY won't land either (other than
under abnormal circumstances).  Been working on hard drives since 1980...
spent more hours with exposed spinning platters in downright grubby
environments than I can count.  It's when the drive is at rest that you
need to worry.  Of course I'm talking about short term use; running the
drive for extended periods with no cover will definitely decrease the
service life.

Dale

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