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Mysterious Capsule in Maxtor Disk Drive?

We had a hard disk die in our home network server. Fortunately, it was mirrored & nothing was lost.

Partly out of curiosity and partly to make sure the personal files were permanently inaccessible, I've taken it apart. Most of the innerds are recognizable from previous fits of such surgery, but there's something new in this one.

It's a retangular capsule, approximately 7/8" long, and about 3/8" square, made of clear plastic, with a soft white concave seal on top. Inside, it is filled with tiny (~1/32" diameter or smaller) black beads.

I figure it's either desicant (never seen black desicant before), or vibration damping material (like lead shot), only I can't imagine that they allow that much lead in anything commercial these days. I pried it out, and it appears to be vented to the outside world through a tiny hole (and an eqaully tiny labyrinth of small passages), and it's quite light, so lead is out. Venting desicant to the outside world doesn't make much sense either, unless the white stuff is some sort of semi-permeable membrane.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Doug White

Reply to
Doug White
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Could it be an air filter? The disk compartment in a hard drive isn't sealed but is open to the atmosphere through a very fine filter, fine enough to take out the particles of cigarette smoke.

Tove

Reply to
Tove Momerathsson

"Doug White" wrote

Possibly an activated-carbon filter, possibly for chlorine or ammonia.

How old was this drive?

-- TP

Reply to
tonyp

Bit of a long shot, perhaps. You mentioned a labyrinth. I guess it was some sort of breathing arrangement which filters out humidity. Back in the 60s (working in military avionics) we used fine coiled up tubes to allow sealed equipment containers to vent to atmospheric pressure, without the insides getting damp. Remember thinking it must be magic, but I even have vague memories of reading some academic paper on the subject.

Reply to
Malcolm Stewart

May be called a swan tube? I recall that Pasteur used this trick to keep germs from entering his flasks.

If the tube volume is more than 10% of the volume of the container, then the natural variation in barometric pressure will not be able to cause "breathing" (and exchange with the atmosphere).

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joseph Gwinn

I like the activated charcoal idea. There's lots of surface area with all the little beads. Probably to keep air polutants from eating the drive.

The drive was only about two years old. The network server it was in primarily gets used for backups, and didn't have particularly hard use. I've never had much use for Maxtor drives, but it's what came with the server. It's been replaced with a Seagate, which is what the mirror drive is.

Doug White

Reply to
Doug White

======================== I've had good results with the large capacity western digitals, and what ever iomega uses for the usb hard drives also seems to stand up, altho I use these mainly for back-up and data tranfer.

Anyone care to give feedback on their personal experiences with the various brand/model hard drives?

Uncle George

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

I've seen dissicant in hard drives, but as you say, never black. A google search for "black dessicant media" is...unenlightening...

Reply to
Dave Hinz

The white stuff could be a semi-permeable membrane. Gore-Tex markets it as such for instrumentation breathers.

Reply to
tomcas

go to the oracle

formatting link

Reply to
Guy Fawkes

It's the cure all virus medicine.

Greg

Reply to
ConcreteArtist

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