14" hard drive refurbish question (7900A) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

9 Aug 1999

...
 1) Everyone said because the lower platter is fixed,
there's no concern for
alignment, precision, feeler guages, etc. Just unbolt the heads, clean 'em,
and bolt 'em back on. No special checks and so forth. Before I unbolt them I
...
 wanted to double check and make sure I wasn't about
to do anything silly.
So - just unbolt, remove, clean, rebolt, and power up? 
Don't forget to vacumn the dust!!!  And change the air filter.
...

2) I was thinking (bad sign <grin>)...if the heads contacted the platter
enough to scrape off a nice circle of oxide, won't cleaning the heads and
replacing the platter accomplish nothing? What I mean is - isn't it very
likely that whatever caused them to scrape in the first place won't be fixed
...
 by a new lower platter and cleaned  heads? What am I
missing here? 

The first time you spin it up I would unplug the head positioner and let it
spin for 10 minutes without the heads loading to be sure to get the last of
the dust out.  I don't know if the HP will stay spinning if it does not find
a servo track however.  If it doesn't then spin it up and down several times
before allowing the heads to load.
What you have done along with above comments are all I ever used to do.

Dan