Squeal on Older Hard Drives

[Brad Parker]

Tony Duell wrote:
>> I wonder why the squeal happens? Whether it's wear on the spring side or the
> 
>> spindle side? If the former, then a donor spring from a scrap unit could fix
> 
>> things.
>
>I would be suprised if the spindle wears, they're normally pretty hard. 
>Often the spring was a replaceable part in the boardswapper guide for the 
>drives, and I think replacing it might well cure the noise.

One fix, "back in the day" was to glue a piece of blue teflon material
onto the backside of the spring.  I'm not an ME but I'm guessing this
changed the natural freq at which it would oscillate.

I don't know what the material was (other than "teflon"), but I seem to
recall at least one mfg did this.  some of those memories are a bit dim :-)

-brad