I’ll start. Did you know you can run a headless version of JD2 on a raspberry pi? It’s not the greatest thing in the world, but sometimes its nice to throw a bunch of links in there and go to sleep.

  • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Did you know the contacts to the head, preamp and the motor on regular spinning disks are not soldered nowadays? That’s right, after some clever PLM engineering, companies decided NOT to do this. Why? It shortens the life span of the disk, thus, your disks die and you go and buy new ones.

    Mitigation of this problem: Remove the controller board from the drive and solder (add solder) to all of the contacts that connect to something to the aluminium chassis of the disk.

        • mikezila@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Try what? Add some pointless solder to a disk and then what? Wait years to see how long it takes to die? How many do I need for a sample size? Do I need to test the same model? What about workloads the drives should be under?

          This is pure untestable unverifiable snake oil.

          • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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            1 year ago

            You can take my word for it and try it. Cuz I’ve done it numerous times and have extended the lives of many many disks. Sure, they all eventually fail, no doubt there. But, at least it will fail later, rather than sooner.

            Test any model you like, doesn’t make a difference, they all perform better after the surgery. And they will be more stable under workload as well, that can be guaranteed.

              • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Because some of these disks were proclaimed worn out and not to be used. I still use all of them in 3 custom NAS builds. I sold 2 of them, the owners still haven’t reported a disk failiure, that was 2 years ago. I use one of the NASes as my personal storage, mdadm in RAID5, I still haven’t had a single disk fail on me. They were all full of “bad sectors” (logical, because of the bad contact between the head/preamp and the control board, bad data was being written to them, passed them with DRevitalize, all of the bad sectors were “reparied”), and yet, somehow, they still work.

                Not to mention the numerous primary (OS) drives I’ve done this operation through the years and most of them still work fine, even though they have fulfilled their purpose (with the advent of SSD and all that). I’ve also compared the life cycle of identical drives that didn’t get this treatment and ones that did. Most of the ones that didn’t get this treatment are dead now (head crash in most cases).

                Do this surgery to all of your drives as soon as you buy them (or at least after they’re out of warranty), disable AAM/APM (wdidle3 in case of WD) (you can do this even if in warranty, it’s a software/firmware tweak) and the disk will practically last forever.

          • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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            1 year ago

            What do you mean what part… all if it, lol 😂. Solder all the pins.

    • ashe@lemmy.starless.one
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      1 year ago

      DON’T DO THIS, at best it’ll do nothing and at worst (muuch more likely) you’ll short and kill your HDD.

      The whole point of contacts is that they aren’t soldered, the transmit current by physical contact. There’s a matching pair on the HDD chassis:

      HDD PCB

      HDD chassis

      • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        They’re not soldered, as in soldered to pins on the aluminium chassis. Look at the image I posted, have I soldered anything from that board to the aluminium chassis? No. The’re solder cushions to act as pillows for the metal head/preamp pins, which leads to having wider contact surface and no oxidation, which in turn leads to better conductivity, no head fly-bys and no head crashes when the head looses contact with the control board.

        BTW, they used to make them with solder cushions, but stopped after a while, cuz those disks could go through hell and back. Remove the boards from some old early 2000’s drives, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

        • ashe@lemmy.starless.one
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          1 year ago

          The contacts are gold, which definitely doesn’t oxidize any more than solder considering it, y’know, doesn’t oxidize in air at all ever. The solder doesn’t really add any contact surface area, and even if it did, it makes no difference for digital signals. “Better conductivity” doesn’t improve digital sigs either. And why would the contacts ever disconnect?

          I can’t confirm the last paragraph, but HDD manufacturers could just move the PCB closer to the chassis and/or make the contacts’ springs a bit stiffer to achieve the exact same thing, which is slightly more pressure between the contacts. That’s literally all you’re getting here.

          • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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            1 year ago

            The contacts are gold, which definitely doesn’t oxidize…

            This looks like gold plated to you?

            When will people learn, don’t trust everything you’re told, check for yourself.

            The solder doesn’t really add any contact surface area…

            Plase take a look at the two, and tell me the contact area is the same. Solder wire is 60% tin, 40% lead (Sn60Pb40). They are both soft metals at room temperature, thus, they displace when pressure is applied on them, like from a needle for example, and they make a nice bed for the needle to lay in, maximizing surface area.

            …and even if it did, it makes no difference for digital signals…

            Oh, now I just know you know nothing about electronics.

            “Better conductivity” doesn’t improve digital sigs either.

            You do know that it’s not just I/O data that goes through those pins, right? Look at some of the buses on the PCB, not all of them are the tiny, there are a few thay are quite thick. You know what they are? They’re the magnetic coil control pins, the thing that makes the heads move accross the surface of the disk… you know, the thing that fails when there’s a head crash. It takes power to move the head, thus, it’s not just a signal now, is it.

            I can’t confirm the last paragraph, but HDD manufacturers could just move the PCB closer to the chassis and/or make the contacts’ springs a bit stiffer to achieve the exact same thing, which is slightly more pressure between the contacts. That’s literally all you’re getting here.

            Look at the doodle again, and you’ll see I’m right.

            I didn’t come up with this idea on my own, as I said, I looked at how things were done in the past, when drives were really good. Everyone soldered the contacts for the pins back in the day, and then, they just stopped. WD were the first, others followed.

            • ashe@lemmy.starless.one
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              1 year ago

              Look, I’m sorry but I have better things to do than arguing about why putting blobs of solder on your HDD’s contacts isn’t a good idea. I’m not gonna stop you, but I don’t think you’ve convinced anyone.

          • 0x4E4F@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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            1 year ago

            This looks like gold plated to you?

            You’ve never actually removed a board after years of use to see what those look like, have you…