Ok so I wanna throw a window on an old harddrive and throw it in my case to make it all pretty! My questions are, I want the old drive to actually spin and what not, I think I read somewhere in here about someone writing a program for that? I don't care if I can't put info on it, I just want it to spin. Second, and this is probably a no brainer, my hard drive is positioned horizontally, but I want the windowed drive to sit vertical so you can see it better. Is it possible to harm my real hard drive my having it installed vertically?

That sounds like a sweet idea... I think it would work, and I'm pretty sure it shouldnt do damage to your other HD, but youll want other advice on that...

why not use the hard drive for a little bit of extra storage? if you can get the program to work on the hd then you didn't kill it so might as well. it will still spin that way.

It is a relatively risky endeavor if you want to keep data on the drive, but you said that's not a concern. The reasons for the risk are dust contamination and magnetic disturbances. HDDs are built in clean rooms because any speck of dust can ruin their ability to read and write data. The cases they are in are magnetically shielded to protect the data on them, so remove the case and you remove the shielding. I have seen this done before and it does look VERY cool. As far as mounting them vertically, I have no idea if it would damage the drive. I assume they are mounted horizontally becasue of space and airflow reasons.

the orientation shouldn't matter. from what i can remember the hard drive should just be in the same orientation it was formatted in.

Horizontal mounting does not harm the drive.

http://linear1.org/gm/archives/00000096.php

theres a little guide to help you along the way

have fun!

EDIT

Quote: Horizontal mounting does not harm the drive.

no kidding? (neither does vertical btw)

You can mount them vertically it's not going to hurt anything. Yoshi from the screen savers modded a hard drive, with a window, and his still worked fine, he said he went through like 4 hard drives to pull it off though. You can put a window in it, and make it spin, and I have heard of mirroring it, so that when your master reads something, the other one moves as well. Pretty cool, but something I would never do.

Check it out on www.g4techtv.com

EDIT: Wow, 3 posts before I even got done writing mine

NOw thatd be sweet to see someone mod and Ipod HD lol seriously thatd be sweet...

If you screw up and HD you can mod it into a HD activity lite that spins when the HD's are spinning. But by trying to mod it to actually work, well, 1 dust particle on a platter and its fuxored...

Here is one from the Voided which I think is a much better mod.
http://www.voidedwarranty.com/module...howpage&pid=25

From what i've heard you cant window a HD larger than 40GB and have it last for more than a few weeks.

Yeah supposedly newer hard drives mainly bigger ones are hard if not impossible to window but lots of people have had success on older equipment

Thats cause that older stuff is like Cold War Era and it needed to withstand a Nuclear Blast



Edit: LOL! Sum_12_Fear I just got your sig remark about prefect world lol!

Quote: Originally Posted by Sum_12_fear Yeah supposedly newer hard drives mainly bigger ones are hard if not impossible to window but lots of people have had success on older equipment

This guy lost 2 40GB HDs he tried to mod.

Quote: Everything worked fine except the two modded hard drives. They had died completely and would only be recognized randomly by BIOS and the arms just moving back and forward trying to find the start track... I got the system up and running fine using an old 10GB HDD. I have a theory why the drives worked at first right after the mod but not later on. After some surfing around I learned that no modern drive with 40GB platters had been windowed successfully. The high density with the combination of a removed screw from the centre of the platters was probably enough to get them un centered enough to make the head loose it's track after a very short usage...

It might work if you cast the top to be the exact same piece, but i dont know how you'd go about doing that... Some manufacturer will offer pre-mod windowed hard drives one of these days, but they'll charge an arm and a leg. WD already had that pre-mod clear external enclosure w/ LEDs. Speaking of that, does anyone know if they made those as straight enclosures, no drive, and if so where i could find one? I have a spare 80GB I should do something with.

Quote: Originally Posted by Cyno01 Some manufacturer will offer pre-mod windowed hard drives one of these days, but they'll charge an arm and a leg. WD already had that pre-mod clear external enclosure w/ LEDs.

hehe I was thinking of goin to the Local University Surplus store and buy up all their 4GB HD's and mod them and sell them ten fold aleast... hehehe

You can mod any HDD you want, period. The reason the old ones are "more successful" is because people actually use them. No one cares if they lose a gig or two, but no one does their 250 gigger.

And, it's really really easy to mess up. Basically, any dust or fingerprints on the disc will fux0r it up. Be careful. Take it apart and move it to a Ziploc bog ASAP to keep it from getting dirt while cutting the top plate.

Also, it's not just the data that gets fekked up if you get too much dirt, it totally messes up the mechanism and won't even spin.

So, do it, but be careful. I was in the midst of doing it with a 500 mb drive, but, school got involved, top halfcut (ran out of discs), drive in a bag, and finally got rid of it after 6 months. Woops.

Quote: Originally Posted by jcarkeys You can mod any HDD you want, period. The reason the old ones are "more successful" is because people actually use them. No one cares if they lose a gig or two, but no one does their 250 gigger. And, it's really really easy to mess up. Basically, any dust or fingerprints on the disc will fux0r it up. Be careful. Take it apart and move it to a Ziploc bog ASAP to keep it from getting dirt while cutting the top plate. Also, it's not just the data that gets fekked up if you get too much dirt, it totally messes up the mechanism and won't even spin. So, do it, but be careful. I was in the midst of doing it with a 500 mb drive, but, school got involved, top halfcut (ran out of discs), drive in a bag, and finally got rid of it after 6 months. Woops.

Looking @ what the guy did for his y2k bug mod he removed the top screw to the center of the spindle. Maybe if you didn't cut a full window and left the center stock so you could keep the screw.

found a bunch of people that have done it
here is a link
http://www.twistedmods.com/article.p...icle&artid=261

Quote: Originally Posted by SPECIALBLEND218 Here is one from the Voided which I think is a much better mod. http://www.voidedwarranty.com/module...howpage&pid=25

How in the hell does that one still work? You'd have to touch everything!