But both of you made me think. Especially since it's "floating" on that little cushion of air, how does it work when the drives are sideways, which seems to be common now. They wouldn't really have gravity to balance out the force of that cushion, so how's that work?
I imagine that the head acts kind of like an airfoil in ground effect; the closer it gets to the surface of the platter the more the air tends to push it away from the platter surface.
I'm guessing something along the lines of what Tex was saying - one of the control chips at the bottom of the drive overheated and started burning on the PCB. I seriously doubt that the fire had anything to do with the drive heads, platters, or spindle. Which means your data may have been recoverable. Though based on what you said it probably wasn't worth it.
The noise though... and I don't think overheated circuitry typically catches fire, although we're talking about such an unlikely occurrence to start with that I guess it's possible.
But both of you made me think. Especially since it's "floating" on that little cushion of air, how does it work when the drives are sideways, which seems to be common now. They wouldn't really have gravity to balance out the force of that cushion, so how's that work?
There's a tiny spring on the heads near the VCM (similar to a spring on a clipboard) that keeps it near the platter surface, either that or the metal used in the arm is stiff enough and the VCM has zero up and down movement that having a drive upside down or sideways won't effect the way the drive reads.
I took apart a dead hard drive so I could see what it looked like on the inside.
I've always thought that having a drive mounted vertically on its end would eliminate any influence of the force of gravity pulling the heads towards or away from the platters. But all my hard drives are mounted horizontally because that's how the computer cases are made.
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http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34391
Glad to hear you saw it happen! Could have been worse. You should buy a lottery ticket for sure
The noise though... and I don't think overheated circuitry typically catches fire, although we're talking about such an unlikely occurrence to start with that I guess it's possible.
There's a tiny spring on the heads near the VCM (similar to a spring on a clipboard) that keeps it near the platter surface, either that or the metal used in the arm is stiff enough and the VCM has zero up and down movement that having a drive upside down or sideways won't effect the way the drive reads.
I took apart a dead hard drive so I could see what it looked like on the inside.