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New Project: Clear Plexi HDD

D

dracos

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jan 8, 2005
Messages
4,354
Something different I wanted to try...

Actually replacing the cover of an hdd with plexi, to show the platters moving etc...

started it today (this morning)

my site www.dragonsteel.us go to Clear HDD Mod page....

decided to go with a different approach, instead of a solid piece of plexi, I am using layers..

Hopefully, when I am done, I will have short video, to show you that it works....
 
yeah, hopefully it works out alright! I remember when Mashie was windowing and lighting up 2 40gig WDs for the eyes of the millenium bug project, and ended up with 2 of the most expensive HDD activity lights ever. Good luck!
 
Well let glue dry overnight...... finished work today and assembled it...
used silicon caulk to seal it.. it is drying now.....

updated site with the new pics...

also did a little creative etching on the cover plexi... a pain doing it reverse, etched on inside, so had to do lettering reversed....
 
Definately badass, even if it doesn't work... It's still pretty badass.
 
BAHAHAHAHAHAA.............

It Works................................................

Uploading Movies Now..... You Can See The Post And Windows Disk Mgmt Photos To See That The Drive Is There!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HARCORE BADASS ................ HAHAHAHAHA


...Yeah..So I'm excited!!!
 
dracos said:
BAHAHAHAHAHAA.............

It Works................................................
Click to expand...
Awesome! Nice job pulling of one of the most dangerous mods. The force was obviously with you on this one. So what are you going to do with it now?
 
Ah, a 1.2 GB drive. You should be safe then. Much newer drives are where the problem comes in.
 
umm ok...... Whats the diff, same size drive..... dimension wise...

Anyway, MOVIES are up, sorry the clips are so small, my web editior lets you select teh dimensions of the clip, but then doesn't show them that way?!?!?!

anyway you can also d/l them, one is 21mb, the other 10mb.. so 56k Sorry........
 
mashie said:
Much much tighter tolerances is the differences.
Click to expand...
What is it that actually fails? Is it because the platter gets dirty? Or does the platter/arm alignment get messed up?
 
What is it that actually fails? Is it because the platter gets dirty? Or does the platter/arm alignment get messed up?
Click to expand...

Yeah that could be it, I mean I did this with a old drive basically to see if I could, if I were to do (and I plan to) it to a new drive, I would use a controlled environment for the taking apart,storing, and assembley, as dust free as possible, and I have learned quite a few things from this to do it perfect the next time around. As you saw it was a two day project, the real one would take at least a week or more, it would be literally perfect.
I would uses micrometers etc to transfer exact dimensions, this time I basically used a tape measure and the cover as a template. (no rocket science there)

Enev with a breather hole, there was not a spec of dust on the platters, I examined the blow hole setup, it is nothing special, basically I assume that thew spinning action from the drive pushes air out of the hole, but none comes in? How exactly it works, I'm not sure, it does somehow..... I'll have to look into all that.
 
The reason why >20gb drives have problems with window mods is that their heads, while in contact with the disc physically, have their electrodes hovering about the height of 10 hydrogen atom diameters above the platter. Any particle, e.g. smoke, could befuddle that quickly.

A secure dust-free environment at home is a bathroom, given 1-1.5 hours to "dry" after running the shower on HOT for about half an hour. The condensing water happens to take most particles in the air with it.

The problem would lie, I believe, in dust from the plexiglass cutting... but i've yet to perform such a mod...

MAD HOT nonetheless, man. Props.
 
L.E.D.s to light up your etchings would make this already bad-ass mod even more awesome :)

By the way, with the added height from the plexiglass layers, would it still fit into the normal hard drive bays without issue?
 
It's been done before. And it only works on older hard drives, IIRC, =<20Gb capacity. Otherwise, your hard drive won't live very long. Or you'll get relentless data corruption, which makes it just as useless as a broken hard drive.

Edit: so, yeah, you're working with a 1.2Gb hard drive, this shouldn't be a problem.
 
It is the same height as the original cover....
I tried to recreate the cover in plexi, when you open a hard drive, the lid has spot for platters, arm to move etc, and they are at different levels, so that is basically why I can up with the layered plexi, and it worked fine!

Yeah leds would be cool, the etching was actually something extra I added at the last minute... I made the lid while I was waiting for glue to dry... and a friend of mine asked how to do etching in Plexi, so I figured why not, it will make it look cool and show him in the process!!!
 
iddqd said:
It's been done before. And it only works on older hard drives, IIRC, =<20Gb capacity. Otherwise, your hard drive won't live very long. Or you'll get relentless data corruption, which makes it just as useless as a broken hard drive.

Edit: so, yeah, you're working with a 1.2Gb hard drive, this shouldn't be a problem.
Click to expand...


I guess I now know what my next mod is...

SO I guess this means I have to go buy a bigger drive and re-do this mod :eek:
I guess I have to get something bigger than a 20, but then wait... If that works, will it be: 'so yeah, you're working with a 20Gb hard drive,this shouldn't be a problem'

SO who has drives on Sale this week...I think Compusa has 120gb on sale for $60, would that work?

Or better yet, would someone like to donate a drive to me, and you can have it when it's done........Remember it has to be at least 21gb to qualify as a good mod apparently.
Oh, and if it doesn't work, I WILL buy you a new one or Paypal you the money for a new one.

Any takers? or should I say givers?


OH ye of little faith.......... such naysayers here I see...
 
dracos said:
I guess I now know what my next mod is...

SO I guess this means I have to go buy a bigger drive and re-do this mod :eek:
I guess I have to get something bigger than a 20, but then wait... If that works, will it be: 'so yeah, you're working with a 20Gb hard drive,this shouldn't be a problem'

SO who has drives on Sale this week...I think Compusa has 120gb on sale for $60, would that work?

Or better yet, would someone like to donate a drive to me, and you can have it when it's done........Remember it has to be at least 21gb to qualify as a good mod apparently.
Oh, and if it doesn't work, I WILL buy you a new one or Paypal you the money for a new one.

Any takers? or should I say givers?


OH ye of little faith.......... such naysayers here I see...
Click to expand...
It's definetly not impossible. This guy, he replaced covers on his brand-new 74Gb raptors with lexan plastic under lab vacuum. Then they started getting mad data corruption... that was because the metal covers were acting as EMI shields. With the covers removed, the EMI was allowed back in. He solved it by replacing the lexan with lexan with a thin layer of aluminum deposited on it. Although both raptors work now, the transparency of the cover is... well, it's not very transparent anymore. Kinda like a static-shield bag, y'know? But at least it works.
 
but the covers of hd's a Aluminum...

non-magnetic properties yes... but shield??
 
The metal doesn't have to be affected by magnetism in order to shield from EMI. Screens made of Brass, which is an alloy of copper and Zinc and has no magnetic properties can be used to make a faraday cage.
 
The drive mod is awesome, but that Scooby-Doo case takes the prize! Your boys are lucky to have a dad that'll do something like that for them!

How do you cut pexi so neatly? Every time I try, no matter what I use, hacksaw, jigsaw, dremmel tool, it welds itself back together right after the blade passes and I spend hours busting and sanding edges!
 
HTPC Rookie said:
The drive mod is awesome, but that Scooby-Doo case takes the prize! Your boys are lucky to have a dad that'll do something like that for them!

How do you cut pexi so neatly? Every time I try, no matter what I use, hacksaw, jigsaw, dremmel tool, it welds itself back together right after the blade passes and I spend hours busting and sanding edges!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the comments/compliments...

Plexi, what I do is cut a bit of it, stop and pull off the cut material, if you get the cut material to early then it is to soft, to late and it will adhere back to the plexi, there is a timeframe from cut to removal that is perfect, where it will just come right off... and also there is ALWAYS alot of sanding involved... and tip on the dremel, don't use it like a circular saw, cut down into the plexi, only the width of the blade, lift blade out, move to next cut, keep repeating and there should be no problem with welding back together, the 'weld' effect is the blade pulling the soft plexi back into the cut and hardening, if you make small cuts you won't have that problem, it takes some practice, and alot of patience... also the smal cuts are better because you are not trying to guide the blade as you cut, like you would with a 'circular' saw motion, make a cut,stop,make a cut,stop.. get a straighter line that way, the spinning of the blade tends to make you turn when cutting......

One last thing, I would invest in a flexible extension for your Dremel if you don't have one already, I don't do any cuts with JUST the dremel, I ALWAYS use the extension, it tends to give you more control...

ok, that's enough!
 
Looks like I'll be heading to Home Desperate tomorrow and picking up a flexible attachment for the old Dremmel!

Thanks for the advice!
 
dracos said:
but the covers of hd's a Aluminum...

non-magnetic properties yes... but shield??
Click to expand...
And he used aluminum on lexan substrate.
 
OK... Fine, what if I sandwiched aluminum,brass etc Mesh between the layers of Plexi?

It would add to it I think, and it would solve the EMI prob?
 
It should. You know, they sell glass with wire already in it... for security purposes, i think. So if you break the glass, alarm will sound off. Either way, they might make some sort of plastic with wire in it, too.
 
Maybe one could sandwich some anti-static bag material between two layers? The metalized stuff. Can still see through it, should be pretty good shielding.
 
I have been thinking of using actual glass, but the shapes, will be hard to cut out of glass..
the layers each have different cuts in them...

I think the Plexi with mesh will work fine....
 
HTPC Rookie said:
Maybe one could sandwich some anti-static bag material between two layers? The metalized stuff. Can still see through it, should be pretty good shielding.
Click to expand...
For a static bag to be effective, it has to be sealed around whatever you are trying to protect. I'm not sure if 1 sheet of it would work in combination with the hard drive case to protect it.
 
My idea would be to actually, imbed the mesh in the plexi....

I haven't worked it out yet, but the idea would be to maybe sandwich it between the layers and put in oven, but how I can clamp it, and or add a weight to it, I haven't figured out yet.... Because the clamp, or weight would damage the plexi, unless I used a piece Larger than I need and cut with Dremel after the solidified ?!?! Hmmm, that might work.....

I need to do some research.............

Or I was just going to put it between the layers, and drape over side, to meet the metal case bottom, to form 'seal/barrier'..........

I'm working on it.........
 
pilotman2004 said:
For a static bag to be effective, it has to be sealed around whatever you are trying to protect. I'm not sure if 1 sheet of it would work in combination with the hard drive case to protect it.
Click to expand...

That could be solved by looping the edges of the material over the bottom of the piece of pexi so that it touches the drive's case, effectively sealing the drive internals with the case for bottom / sides, and the wrap on the top.

But that would probably turn out butt-ugly, because it would be a PITA to get the corners folded neatly.
 
dracos said:
Or I was just going to put it between the layers, and drape over side, to meet the metal case bottom, to form 'seal/barrier'..........
Click to expand...
Heres what you could do. Have the mesh inbetween the plexi layers, so the bottom plexi layer still seals the drive. Then paint the edge of the plexi/mesh sandwich with conductive paint (window defogger repair paint, also Ratshack has conductive paint pens), so the mesh would make contact with the drive body. Like this:
hddwindowmeshjpg6ay.jpg
 
That's excellent!

A few years back I was in Internet Week magazine...big full page of my grinning mug talking about the benefits of DSL. The editors left my work e-mail and Website URL in the article.

Didn't take two days before I was swamped with garbage e-mail, and even had little shitbags in friggin GERMANY trying to hack the Website.

Hope that don't happen to you!
 
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