It’s not common to find drives in a salvage – so to have gotten three within one salvage is a bit of a record. Anyway, this was one of Seagate’s most popular “value” series drives – I’ve handled at least 12 of these at various times. It’s decently reliable, and a decent performer too, but what sets it apart is the rubber skin-suit!
This was one of those “wacky” ideas that drive manufacturers started coming out with to try and reduce the number of failures induced by transit and install – this was one of Seagate’s attempt to reduce shock, PCB scratches and ESD failures by encasing the drive in rubber. It definitely looked distinctive, but whether it worked is another issue altogether.
After this, they came out with different iterations of the SeaShield, like the kind that’s a metal plate covering the PCB only, while other manufacturers like Samsung started shipping their drives with rubber feet and a plastic bubble shell that wrapped around the drive (which Seagate did for a time as well). Western Digital instead had their PCB designed so the components were not on the exposed side – each to their own I suppose.
The label on this drive indicates that it’s an OEM channel drive – not retail, so the computer vendor is responsible for handling the warranty. This drive is dated Week 25 of 2000, and was made in China.
The drive itself still functions, barely. It makes some strange noises and occasional stalls indicating tracking problems – I have no reason or space to keep bad drives, so it’s going to be torn apart. What I normally keep are the magnets (and sometimes, the platters). Hard disk magnets are some of the strongest you will find in consumer gear, and they’re useful for many things, like finding screws in carpet …
Removing the rubber shield shows the drive unit itself. I’m sure at one point, drives based on this design may have shipped without the shield and had the information label adhered to the top cover directly.
It’s almost beautiful to see it bare. It’s pure. It’s clean. No tricky labels to peel off to find screws. There’s a plate material (you can see it as a different coloured metal) which is adhered to the aluminium can top – this can be found in many drives – it’s a magnetic shield. It’s made of some diamagnetic material which resists intrusion of magnetic fields to prevent external interference. As for the metal tape over the slot – that’s the opening used by the servowriter during manufacture.
The underside of the drive shows a well-curved PCB with a heap of STMicroelectronics branded chips. One of them is certainly flash for the firmware – so they hadn’t gotten onto the whole service-cylinder thing yet. Interestingly the main processor is branded Infineon (fabricated, maybe), with the Atlantis platform name, but is copyright Siemens (who may have done all the design). A co-operation of many companies indeed.
After removing the screws, you will find that the drive still doesn’t come apart – this is because of the sealing tape –
It’s cheaper than using a solid lid and clamping foam with pressure to form the seal. If memory serves me right, this whole idea debuted in later Seagate Medalist series drives, which themselves were low cost designs which were based on Conner’s designs (Seagate having just acquired Conner at the time).
The insides of the drive are simple and clean – you can see the breather hole is on the underside of the drive. The drive itself was a single platter, two headed affair.
And only three spindle clamp screws as well.
Removing the PCB from the underisde shows a traditional “spring” contact style connection for the three phase spindle motor and VCM/head-stack assembly.
