Rob said:
<snip>
the Math-CS dept at my alma-mater had pretty poster depicting the
magnified size of various particles hair, dust, skin cell and smoke
particles next to
the disk heads and the cushion of air that head float on and if i
remember correctly the smoke particle would barely squeeze between the
head and platter
guessing you were dust lucky with the drive surgery
Not me, the only time I've opened drives either they were already dead or
they were old drives being used as show-and-tells when teaching a class.
Never expected them to actually run afterwards. But if you will google
the archive for this newsgroup I think you'll find some reports from people
who have done this to see how long the drive would run.
One thing that is really bad news is fingerprints. I've seen a fingerprint
rip the head off and toss it across the room (somebody decided to power up
a show-and-tell after it had been passed around the classroom).
If it's _thicker_ than the gap and not stuck down and not too massive it
just gets pushed aside. If it's brittle though it may shatter when it hits
the head and make smaller particles. If it's hard and massive enough then
it can chip or deform the head. If it's an insect you get ichor on the
platter and the result is similar to fingerprints.
Bear in mind that that poster dates from the days of removable disk packs,
when drives were _not_ sealed. Few minicomputers were installed in special
rooms and even mainframe shops generally didn't have laminar-flow positive
pressure clean rooms with airlocks. Nonetheless a standard operation was
for some guy in a suit and tie (if it was a corporate shop) or tie-dyed tee
shirt and jeans and hair down to his ankles (if it was a university shop)
to change disk packs and they ran a good long time despite such treatment.
That's the reason for the posters, to remind people of why that area was
supposed to be kept clean.