One more thing I thought of (and since I get the digest probably has been said) When I first spin up the pack I run a program which quickly seeks seeks through each track and then repeats. This hopefully does a couple of things, if a defect/dust is still on the platter it won't sit on that one spot long, and it lets you quickly know how the pack it while you are standing next to the drive to hit the load switch if it starts sounding too bad. Even with the best cleaning effort I sometimes have some faint pings go away. I assume the head manages to knock the contaminate away. If it doesn't clear I either give up on the pack or take it apart again using where the head positioner was to figure out where to look more. I was working with a bunch of packs which were not stored in bags so they were pretty dirty to start with. I can't tell you how to figure out how to tell when a ping is too loud, but I would be conservative, especially if you got plenty of packs. Start with one that doesn't have anything valuable on it, I got better with practice. After unmounting a pack that made noise I always inspect the heads and then clean them anyway. I found oxide on them once with a pack that sounded enough different I didn't let it finish its pass. David Gesswein http://www.pdp8.net/ -- Old computers with blinkenlights