On 10/20/2012 05:10 PM, js at cimmeri.com wrote: If the lube is failing so are the bearings and times up. Repair is unlikely for the 5.25 and smaller drives. Since I'm playing with ST506 and later MFM lube is not easily possible as they are sealed. I've not had any issues to date and they seem to run fine when I pull them out. I can say the older Oxide coated drives are know for Stiction and that seems to get worse with age. I have my first ST506 (ca 1981) that needs a rotational twist (inertia) to start because of that but that drive did that since about 1985. My St225s, D540s, 1325s and RD54s are still going fine along with all the RZ series I have. I use the RZs for fast backups plug them in, boot stand alone backup, do image copy, shutdown and disconnect. That way if the system drive pukes (and I assume it will someday) it's a swap and that is two levels deep. The key was collecting when cheap or free was common for that type everything and anything, careful storage (no garage or out in the wide temp range shed) and use even if infrequent (backups). Also bad drives were taken as the HDA or board were salvageable as its rare both fail at the same time. I was hot for any 1325 as often the problem was the head was simply stuck, open, unstick, use for years after. At the other extreme drive known to have high failure rate were marked as use for replacement or for parts swap. Some were avoided or given away while working like ST250s as they would fail and were known to be very bad. The IDE collection runs from from small 40mb stuff to a box load of ST3660A (500MB later version that had a great track record, same for 4.3MB WD). Then again I have CDC 20mb SCSI that everyone said was the worst drive for failure thats still going (CP/M machine using Micromint SB180) and a Quantum Bigfoot 1gb IDE that is supposed to be also terrible and mine was gotten free and still runs a backup 486DX box. Same for my SYQUEST 270Mb cartridge drive and disks that still work with the Parallel port to IDE adaptor they sold it with. So I may be the exception or just treated them better. However, MMC, SD, USB flash, CF and IDE/SATA based solid state drives are also collected and used as well even old very small USB and CF. They often are a good solution rather than running an older IDE drive. Then again I've upgraded my S100 to run IDE and the IDE of choice is CF then. Floppy is usually 3.5 (save for NS* hard sector) as they are common still and so is media. So the need for drives and their heat, power and cooling needs are much reduced making it easier to keep the old boxes going. In the end it's what the system requires that dictates how old I go on disks and spares for them. the DEC systems had OS and Controller dependencies that mean keeping MFM drives handy and a VS2000 to format them. Also since I have drives, RQDXn controllers are good for me to use and since the drives are scarce often the controller is cheap it's just easier. Fortunately I do have a few CMD controllers for the QBUS uVAXen so that solves the large disk problem for them. the small uVAXen (3100 family) run SCSI and when people were chucking 200M/400M/600M/1gb/4gb drive I grabbed them for spares. Problems are avoided then. Allison