[HN Gopher] Gooey rubber that's slowly ruining old hard drives
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Gooey rubber that's slowly ruining old hard drives
Author : zdw
Score : 274 points
Date : 2025-03-02 22:11 UTC (1 days ago)
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| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Chances are it's poyurethane.
|
| Low-density polyethylene would have been the better choice for
| longevity, but not so much for shock-absorbtion.
| userbinator wrote:
| PU is definitely known for degrading like this over time.
|
| LDPE foam exists, but I think it wasn't common yet at that
| time.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| Why would you say PU rubber? ~30 years in an environment with
| some thermal cycling seems rather high for PU rubber.
| doctor_radium wrote:
| I'm a bit surprised there was no mention of semiconductors
| (mostly capacitors?) going bad on 1990's hard drives. I want to
| rescue the Fast SCSI2 drive on my old Amiga at some point and
| never thought the problem might be inside. If the electronics on
| server-quality drives (it sounds like a jet engine) are this
| reliable, then I'll be thankful for having just one problem and
| not two.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Hm, I have some classic scsi drives still kicking in some old
| Macintoshes, maybe I aught to back them up. They're funny,
| sometimes they get stuck and I have to whack them with the
| rubber side of a screwdriver to start them up.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Do HDDs have many electrolytics? Those are the main culprits
| for going bad, and are usually used for power electronics, not
| controllers/processing circuitry (they don't need the bulk
| capacitance that you'd usually use an electrolytic for)
| dougg3 wrote:
| There are indeed some aluminum electrolytics hiding on
| Quantum drives. They look sneakily like tantalum caps, but
| they're just cans hiding inside a plastic cover. Here's one
| where I accidentally broke the cover, revealing what's
| underneath:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/LdjUx3v.jpeg
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| You can't convince me that's not intentionally disguised
| like that.
| yborg wrote:
| It's more likely so these could be used with a pick and
| place machine. They're obviously lytics if you look at
| the ends. I don't know why everything has to be a
| conspiracy these days.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| No reasonable EE would mistake this for anything but an
| electrolytic cap.
|
| This is a very old package design from the transition
| between through hole and SMD. The process for making the
| vertical axial style common now hadn't been perfected and
| it was briefly cheaper to cast regular axial caps into an
| epoxy block.
|
| No other component looks like this, it's a very distinct
| package and footprint from any other type of cap. No one
| tried to disguise anything, they really just thought this
| was the cheapest way to make a surface mount electrolytic
| cap.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| That is cute as hell XD
| doctor_radium wrote:
| I'd have to pull the drive to have a good look, but my memory
| is that the circuit board resembles the inside of a 1960's
| era transistor radio. Will hope you're right.
| coder543 wrote:
| > I'm a bit surprised there was no mention of semiconductors
| (mostly capacitors?) going bad on 1990's hard drives.
|
| I don't think any kind of capacitor is a semiconductor.
| rzzzt wrote:
| _Dons glasses_ well etymologically... the "semi-" in
| semiconductor means "partial", something between an insulator
| and a conductor. A capacitor is an insulator between two
| conductors.
|
| (But this approach fails on the temperature coefficient of
| resistance test: capacitor ESR increases with temperature
| while semiconductors have a negative coefficient.)
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Capacitors aren't semiconductors, they are just regular
| components.
|
| Semiconductors actually are pretty stable long term.
|
| The capacitors that go bad tend to be the electrolytic ones,
| and there aren't a lot of those on things like hard drives.
| Apreche wrote:
| I had a 20MB external SCSI hard drive for my Mac Plus. I sold it
| a few years back. Still worked!
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| The 20MB era drives tended to have stepper motor actuators, not
| voice coil (in general). Probably not vulnerable to this
| particular failure mode.
| EndShell wrote:
| The "Adrian's Digital Basement 2" Channel took a "Plus+ Hardcard"
| drive and found something similar.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzMoEwTTFJs
| rzzzt wrote:
| Colin from "This Does Not Compute" used the same Kapton tape
| fix on an Apple tablet prototype:
| https://youtu.be/OM64l8tZSwY?t=293
|
| I was wondering whether the flat tape makes some cylinders
| physically inaccessible but it seems like this is not an issue.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Wow, that was my first PC HDD. (I had a 10MB HDD in my Sirius 1
| before that)
|
| Bought at an Egghead somewhere the Computer Museum in Boston
| while on vacation from the UK -- about half the price of
| something similar in England at the time due to exchange rate.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Rubber doesn't age well.
|
| I guess that we've all had some kind of gear that still works
| fine, but the rubber coating is all tacky and nasty, and leaves
| smears on your hand.
|
| I had to toss out a bunch of really good mice because of that.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| You can use isopropyl alcohol to remove the sticky nasty rubber
| and at least make the thing usable again.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Tried that.
|
| Didn't work for me. Still sticky and messy, with the added
| benefit of adding schmutz from the cloth I used.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It takes a lot of alcohol. I learned to soak a paper towel
| and rub it on the sticky stuff with almost no pressure. If
| it sticks, there is not enough alcohol.
|
| And change the paper towel frequently. It works by
| dissolving the sticky stuff, not mechanically wiping it
| off. So the paper towel picks up the dissolved crud after
| only a few wipes, then switch to a clean one.
|
| I've cleaned cameras, mice, umbrella handles, and the back
| of a Samsung tablet this way.
| MaKey wrote:
| Next time give lighter fluid a try, that should work
| better.
| MaKey wrote:
| Try lighter fluid, that should work better.
| arrowleaf wrote:
| Lighter fluid can make plastics brittle. Odorless mineral
| spirits, shop towels, and gloves would be my next step.
| alyandon wrote:
| I had some success in soaking gooey rubber parts in a
| vinegar and water bath overnight. It seemed to cause the
| gooey stuff to slough off enough that I was able to removed
| by scrubbing lightly with a dish rag.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| nail polish remover works
| stronglikedan wrote:
| alcohol doesn't work, but acetone does
| Marsymars wrote:
| > Rubber doesn't age well.
|
| This morning I replaced the rubber grip on my manual coffer
| grinder. By my math I'd ground about 40 kg of coffee by hand
| over 4 years, and the grip had gotten to the point where it
| just spun around the body of the grinder unless held very
| tightly.
|
| I assume I could extend the lifespan by wearing gloves when I
| grind coffee to keep my hand oils off the rubber, but the
| replacement was only $5.
| xandrius wrote:
| 4 years vs 40. Different timescale and use?
| Marsymars wrote:
| Oh yeah, completely. Was just an offhand comment about my
| very recent experience with aging rubber of one particular
| type.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| In some cases, plastic doesn't either. It will "dry" out and
| either crack or begin to flake off. I've had plastic gasoline
| containers where the plastic rings that you tighten down to
| prevent leakage, simply crack down the sides when trying to
| unscrew them to get to the fuel, especially in winter time.
|
| This is not to say all plastic is this way, some plastics that
| are more flexible, like on the gas containers themselves, can
| last for years. But the cap rings are made of hard plastic.
| MBCook wrote:
| Yep. Vintage Macs suffer from the plastic cases getting
| brittle and snapping when bent.
|
| The problem is on many models they were _meant_ to bend some
| to release a clip, for example to open the top of a case.
|
| Or they just can't hold the stress they were supposed to,
| like the display hinge attachment points on many classic Mac
| laptops.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| Yup - my Nexus 5 is all sticky and nasty because they made the
| back out of rubber.
|
| What are steering wheels made of? That material seems to last
| longer, and they exist in much harsher conditions.
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| Lighter fluid will easily remove the soft touch coating and
| you can reapply it again if you wish. Steering wheels are
| mostly leather.
| gardaani wrote:
| That's why I've decided that my next mouse won't have any
| rubber in it, but it's difficult to find a good mouse without
| rubber. I'm still looking for one.
|
| Generally, I try to avoid buying anything with rubber. It is
| usually the first part that goes bad. Either it gets sticky and
| starts melting or it gets hard and dry and breaks up. Also, I
| avoid using rubber bands. They usually end up damaging objects
| they hold together.
|
| Here's a good page about conservation of rubbers and plastics
| for those who like to preserve their vintage stuff for a long
| time. https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-
| institute/services/con...
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| If you have don't care about the price, there's always
| FinalMouse. Their mice are carbon fiber, with PTFE feet. I
| forget if the wheel has any, I'd have to check once I'm home.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Remindy me of my Wii remotes with their gross rubber sleeves. I
| really need to clean them.
| kragen wrote:
| Some rubber ages very well indeed. Some doesn't.
|
| "Rubber" means lots of different plastics, some of which are
| very stable and some of which are very unstable. Some are
| natural; others are synthetic. All they have in common is that
| they are soft and very elastic--if even that, since sometimes
| ebonite is called a rubber as well, comprised as it is in large
| part of natural latex rubber.
|
| Silicone rubbers in particular are extremely stable.
| loco5niner wrote:
| I've 'fixed' a number of items like that with isopropyl
| alcohol. Googling brought me that solution, and although it
| discolors, it's functional. You have to use a lot though.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Ignore all the comments telling you to use alcohol to clean
| this. It doesn't work, but acetone does.
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| I too have fixed (temporarily) a hard drive by opening it open
| and moving the arm back and forth a few times. I got about 20
| minutes out of it. Was able to save some photos... that are
| stored on another hard drive.
| acomjean wrote:
| I had forgotten about Quantum hard drives.. I bought a Quantum
| harddrive in the 1990s for my mac like "Tower Power Pro".. It
| stopped working about a week after I got it with clicks. The
| first clue something was amiss was the person on the phone
| stating "thats a little early for it to fail". Got a replacement
| drive... 2 weeks later same issue. I think they were bought out
| by someone.
|
| As I get older I wonder how may of my burned DVDs will still
| work.. My MiniDiscs still do as of this fall when I dusted them
| off (different technology). I had heard of tv networks "baking "
| magnetic tapes to get the information off.[1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky-shed_syndrome
| kstrauser wrote:
| I bought a 50MB (yes, megs) Quantum HD from an acquaintance. It
| was freaking _slow_ connected to my Amiga, like 20-30KB per
| second. It also made a horrible high-pitched whine.
|
| Figuring I had nothing to lose, I turned it over and squirted
| some 3-in-1 oil on the motor spindle. The whine started
| increasing in pitch as it quietened, and slowly the HD
| benchmark program started creeping up toward a more reasonable
| 1MB/s or so. I didn't use that drive afterward, and just copied
| the, ahem, _public domain apps and games_ off it and then threw
| it away.
|
| I have not before or since sped up a computer by oiling it.
| klysm wrote:
| I used to cynically think that things breaking down over time was
| mostly a choice for built-in obsolescence. After doing some real
| physical product design though, I can say that it's really
| difficult to build things to last.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Spending time in a company that designs and manufactures real
| products will cure anyone of this conspiracy theory. There's
| probably an exception for companies that don't have any
| warranty and don't have to suffer returns (e.g. the stuff you
| buy from Temu). Any company that has to build a reputation and
| suffer the economic consequences of warranty claims will not be
| doing anything to intentionally make their products break down
| over time.
|
| Once you're close to the engineering side of physical products
| you also realize how hard it would be to make products that
| break down precisely after the warranty period is up. Most
| failure modes get spread out over a very long time
| (years/decades). Attempts at intentional obsolescence would
| start cutting into your warranty period very easily.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Do you think the fact that new cars have engines that are not
| rebuildable but only replaceable is just a coincidence? With
| every year car manufacturers get more insight in how and when
| things break, thus allowing the use of more plastic parts in
| the engine bay
| SR2Z wrote:
| It's not a coincidence - new cars have turbochargers and
| electronic engine control that provide huge
| performance/efficiency gains and necessarily are harder to
| repair.
|
| Your average shitty 4-banger from the 80s or 90s is not
| remotely comparable to a new engine - in almost every
| respect (including reliability!) the new one is better.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| New engines also have thin blocks, which cannot be honed
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| New engines don't ever need to be honed. You can change
| the performance parameters in software easily enough.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| honing is part of rebuild
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Turbochargers date back to the 1920s, and I'd rather
| troubleshoot a modern EFI/GDI system than a carburetor
| any day of the week.
| SR2Z wrote:
| Sure they're old, but my understanding is that outside of
| diesels and aircraft they were too fiddly and unreliable
| to put in common use.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Almost any car can go 200,000 miles these days and
| exceptions (Hyundai/Kia engines, Nissan transmissions) are
| well known and excoriated.
|
| Pre OBD2 cars just didn't do that. 100k was a significant
| milestone for the life of the car. Today, it's a
| preventative maintenance milestone.
|
| Shitty plastic parts aren't a feature of modern cars, just
| lousy companies. I had a 1991 Dodge Spirit in college and
| high school that had a little plastic part in the
| distributor that broke when it got hot.
|
| When it did, the car would just stop if you hit a puddle or
| turned right quickly. It did so enough that I kept two
| spares in the trunk. One time the car died on the ramp from
| the GW Bridge to the West Side Drive. I just stopped on the
| ramp and fixed it, pissing off hundreds of people in the
| process.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >Almost any car can go 200,000 miles these days and
| exceptions
|
| Doubt that
|
| >Pre OBD2 cars just didn't do that
|
| In Eastern Europe, if the car has 200k-300k km on the
| odomoter, it only means one thing - the odometer is
| turned back. Pre OBD2 doing 500k and up is pretty normal
| here.
|
| >little plastic part in the distributor
|
| Distributor was always plastic, afaik. I'm talking about
| plastic water pumps on the new BMWs
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| "How Many Miles Does a Car Last?
|
| The Bureau of Transportation indicates that the average
| age across the board for vehicles still on the road is
| just over 11 years according to Autotrader, and the
| average may be approaching 12 years. Standard cars in
| this day and age are expected to keep running up to
| 200,000 miles, while cars with electric engines are
| expected to last for up to 300,000 miles."
|
| https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a32758625/how-many-
| mil...
| kube-system wrote:
| Old BMWs have plastic water pumps. That's hardly
| something new.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Great story. The GW bridge is one of the most stressful
| driving-in-city-you-don't-know-well experiences I've ever
| had. We were literally shouting at google maps as it
| blithely delivered nonsense while we were surrounded by
| cars who wanted very much not to let us change lanes.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| The cost of improved quality still need only offset the cost
| of returns within the warranty period and opinion on
| reasonable product lifetime though. At some point the cost of
| better quality will be greater than the profit margin a
| company is willing to accept and a consumer is willing to
| pay, but it's in the companies best interest to get that as
| close to a number that passes the pub test (e.g., an
| 'untentional' bug bricking the firmware the day after
| warrantee expires)
|
| I'm not convinced some of my very expensive smart products
| aren't intentionally degrading over time, given fw is
| introducing more functional bugs.
| eviks wrote:
| > Any company that has to build a reputation and suffer the
| economic consequences of warranty claims
|
| What are the economic consequences of warranty claims if you
| products are cheapened to fail after the warranty expires?
|
| Have you not heard of enough of penny-pinching electronics
| fails (a device worth hundreds $ failing due to low quality
| part worth cents)?
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I think the point is that Hanlon's Razor applies here.
| Though there are definitely cases like this, I'm not sure
| how one could prove that the penny-pincher was
| intentionally oblivious to the damage from failure.
| margalabargala wrote:
| The argument is, cheapening your products to break after
| the warranty expired is sufficiently hard that it would
| result in plenty of products breaking _before_ the warranty
| expires.
| eviks wrote:
| It's not rocket science
|
| First, you're not blind - you can test your product to
| see what the "plenty" is.
|
| Second, many components have rated use, so it's easy to
| estimate mean time to fail and pick the one beyond the
| warranty period with whatever buffer you like. It's not
| like you need seconds level of precision here!
| stouset wrote:
| Might I suggest reading about the normal distribution?
|
| Or, I don't know, perhaps giving slightly greater
| consideration to the people in this thread who've
| actually worked on physical device engineering?
| eviks wrote:
| The level of consideration matches the level of
| argumentation, e.g., it's obvious you failed in your
| interpretative nitpicking on the word "mean" and think
| "reading about the normal distribution" means anything in
| this context.
| stouset wrote:
| Appropriately for the topic, I tailored the level of
| consideration to just barely exceed that of your original
| argument. So, next to none.
| eviks wrote:
| Are you replying to yourself? You were the one demanding
| consideration, not me!
| nickff wrote:
| Please design a physical product to reliably fail after a
| specific and precise amount of time (not usage, because
| that's easier and not what you're arguing), then come
| back and describe how easily you accomplished that feat.
| Everyone reading this thread who has worked in device
| design knows that your assertions are completely and
| utterly misguided.
| eviks wrote:
| Right after you explain how in this imaginary world of 0
| knowledge where you're not even capable of translating
| usage into time companies set a warranty to 3 years
| (>legal min) instead of 13; and why there are warranty
| limitations for heavy use.
|
| (and no, you don't need "reliably ... specific and
| precise", those are just artifical constraints you've
| added)
|
| And don't speak for everyone, not everyone is so clueless
| re. business decisions just because they've designed some
| hardware.
| stouset wrote:
| "I know so much more about this topic from some casual
| Googling than people who actually do this for a living,
| so please listen to me."
| Marsymars wrote:
| I agree with your overall sentiment, but I can't help but
| feel that when companies offer single-year warranties it's
| because they haven't put in the engineering to keep the
| failure rate down over what's actually a reasonable-for-the-
| consumer lifespan for the product.
| jwagenet wrote:
| Or perhaps a manufacturer has determined the customer isn't
| willing to pay a premium for the engineering or material
| costs required to increase lifespan.
| Salgat wrote:
| When peoplespeak of planned obsolescence, they're discussing
| how companies pay the bare minimum to make a part that
| functions within the warranty period. They aren't doing it to
| fail the part prematurely, they'd doing it to pinch pennies
| in the manufacturing costs.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >it's really difficult to build things to last
|
| A lot of depends on where your price point is. Do you compete
| with Temu or do you sell expensive things. People rarely expect
| cheap things to last, but if you don't compete on being the
| cheapest, than the product is expected to be made to last
| klysm wrote:
| I'm saying even when cost isn't the motivating factor, it's
| _still_ difficult to build things to really last, especially
| when there are moving parts.
| desdenova wrote:
| Obsolescence doesn't exist because a comically evil mastermind
| designs things to break. It exists because capitalism favors
| profits over anything else.
|
| A lower quality component is cheaper than a higher quality one
| that would last longer, so that's what ends up being mass
| produced, and that's what you, as a product designer with no
| power over the entirety of the production pipeline, has to work
| with.
| guhidalg wrote:
| You are assuming that a product designer needs the product to
| last as long as possible given our current knowledge of
| physics, chemistry, engineering, and manufacturing at the
| moment. Most of the time, that's just not necessary. Things
| break, and if you can make some money off of them before they
| break then we can keep the cycle going. Customers would
| happily spend the same amount of money again after some time
| if they expect an improved product (for proof, see every
| subscription service).
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Well, also it turns out that most people won't pay that much
| extra for something to last longer.
| entropi wrote:
| Also paying extra does not in any way mean you will get any
| better quality these days. It is indeed a market for
| lemons.
| AngryData wrote:
| It might if there was an actual reliable correlation
| between the price of a product and its longevity. But many
| times the shittiest products will slap on some marketing
| materials about it being extra heavy duty or something, or
| design it to appear like a more reliable competing product,
| but charge more for it. I buy the cheapest parts not
| because I want the cheapest parts, but because spending an
| extra 20% on the price often results in the exact same part
| with zero extra value.
| Salgat wrote:
| And part of this is because it's very difficult for
| consumers to measure this, especially as even the best
| brands experience enshitification. Sears' Craftsman tools
| famously had a lifetime warranty, but capitalism eventually
| did its thing and outsourced their manufacture and removed
| the lifetime warranty, hoping to leverage years of good
| will for a short term gain.
| genewitch wrote:
| They also started putting plastic gears in their gas
| powered stuff. No bearings, just bushings in the shaft.
| Crap like that.
|
| All these companies some of us remember are all now owned
| by the same company. This is how capitalism goes.
| Eventually, a company makes a mistake, and a competitor
| will absorb them.
|
| This is dramatically simplified, but the big joke is that
| capitalism breeds competition and that is good for the
| consumer.
|
| The illusion of choice via mergers and acquisitions.
| Salgat wrote:
| That reminds me of what happened with Kitchenaid, where
| now only the pro line and better has metal gears, which
| is why folks seek out the old models at garage sales.
| skinkestek wrote:
| People have typical shelled out significant more money for
| Miele washing machines because they were known to last
| typically up to somewhere between 1 and 2 decades and be
| repairable.
|
| People pay a lot extra for Toyota.
|
| I don't want to pay extra for my pants to last at least a
| full year (think 100 days use, 30 wash cycles), or for my
| electronics to last at least five years since I am old
| enough to remember that this used to be absolutely normal
| and the way things used to be.
| yMEyUyNE1 wrote:
| > capitalism favors profits over anything else.
|
| At what rate of return does "profits" turn into unbridled
| greed and capitalism turns into parasitic exploitation?
| baq wrote:
| > It exists because capitalism favors profits over anything
| else.
|
| ...and that's where the regulator needs to step in and
| establish a set of requirements which must be met to allow
| profiting.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| There is a choice to pay 4 cents or 6 cents for a capacitor in
| your electronic devices.
| waste_monk wrote:
| "There is no choice" - clueless MBA
| Scoundreller wrote:
| There was a Leviton (well known brand) timer power switch
| that would prematurely fail.
|
| They spec'd out too low temperature rating of a capacitor
| that was right next to a heat source and cook itself to
| death:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=315&v=BQM4ERy-wpY
|
| https://electronupdate.blogspot.com/2017/12/leviton-
| ltb30-bu...
|
| So yeah, tried too hard to save 2 cents
| klysm wrote:
| That's not a 'saving 2 cents problem', that's a failure to
| recognize the thermal environment and requirements for a
| component, which is kind of my entire point: engineering
| isn't easy.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The 6 cent capacitor is more durable and can absorb an
| error like that without the product failing.
|
| Like they say that anyone can overbuild a bridge but only
| an engineer can make it barely stand up. A lot of that
| cost cutting is useful but it tends to go too far.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >Like they say that anyone can overbuild a bridge but
| only an engineer can make it barely stand up
|
| The majority of biggest suspension bridges if I remember
| correctly are barely standing up. They use above 80% of
| the cables carrying capacity for themselves.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Same point: anyone can build a submarine that gets to the
| Titanic.
| eschneider wrote:
| Yeah. Anyone can get to the bottom of the ocean. Getting
| back up alive involves more skill.
| AngryData wrote:
| But unless you spend the effort to personally test those 2
| cent more expensive parts, how do you know you are actually
| getting more for your money until after your or your
| customer's shit is broken? Even if you do test it, you might
| need to retest those same parts a year or two down the line
| as either your suppliers equipment wears down, or the skimp
| on QC more over time, or if they just outsource it to someone
| else as a middle man. There is a lot of room in there for
| people to get fleeced because everybody is playing the same
| game all the way down the line to the hole they dug the
| minerals out of.
| klysm wrote:
| That's like the simplest possible case, and it's not even
| that clear cut. The truth is nobody has any idea which
| capacitor is going to last longer.
|
| Things like fatigue failure, surface wear, vibration,
| corrosion, etc. and super hard. Entropy is a real bitch and
| it comes for everything.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Your CEO will be very upset when they find out that their
| probable bonus is used on "useless" capacitors, 2 cents at a
| time. Instead, you should use 2 cent capacitors and pay him
| the rest for the ingenuity. /s
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| > it's really difficult to build things to last.
|
| Having a non-user replaceable battery is a really easy way to
| ensure a product stops working after 3-4 years though.
|
| And the criticism is typically directed at companies like
| Apple, who does make things that last physically, but then
| force you to upgrade by way of battery.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Both can be true: planned obsolescence is real, but building
| things to last is difficult too.
|
| IMO the durability problems in early generations of products
| tend to be "real", because there are still real engineering
| problems that aren't understood, and there isn't (generally)
| a super limited market. Once the engineering problems are
| solved and the market is fully saturated, there is suddenly
| an incentive to add planned obsolescence. I don't have any
| data to back up this claim though.
| jordanb wrote:
| A more accurate term is "value engineering."
|
| If you have a product that's been in the market for a while
| and it looks like it's meeting service life expectations
| you start looking at it trying to find ways to save money
| by substituting cheaper parts. You swap out metal gears for
| plastic gears, for instance.
|
| If these parts have a shorter service life, but the service
| life is still longer than the warranty, then maybe that's a
| win in two ways for the manufacturer.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Wow that's super interesting! I've never heard of this,
| but the appeal is immediately obvious. Thanks for
| commenting, gonna have to do a Wikipedia binge.
| folsom wrote:
| I think of it as a continuous feedback loop between
| engineering, finance, and QA that ultimately ends in a
| product being manufactured as inexpensively as possible
| without dying in the warranty period.
| xethos wrote:
| > You swap out metal gears for plastic gears, for
| instance.
|
| Great, till the motor that drives the gears jams. When
| the gears are metal,the expensive part (the motor) is
| more likely to lose. When the gears are plastic, the
| motor survives and you need to replace the gears with
| nylon ones or 3D print your own.
|
| The plastic gears may not always be designed as a
| sacrificial part, but most consumers unfairly dismiss the
| possibility immediately
|
| This comes down to warranty too. If it fails during the
| warranty period, which one does the OEM want to pay to
| replace: the expensive motor, or the cheap gearing?
| nicoburns wrote:
| You're never really forced to upgrade because of battery. If
| you don't want to get Apple to replace it (which though
| expensive is still _much_ cheaper than a new phone), then you
| can take it to your local phone repair shop which will do it
| for not much more than the cost of a replacement battery.
| yard2010 wrote:
| In some versions of the iPhone the screen is maliciously
| connected to the board with strong adhesive making these
| replacements not easy at all.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's fairly easy to open. They designed it so a cheap and
| inexperienced worker in the Apple Store can replace the
| battery quickly and without issues.
|
| They also made a massive improvement by designing an
| adhesive for the battery that detaches with electricity.
| So you no longer have to use pull tabs or heat.
| Someone wrote:
| > the screen is maliciously connected to the board with
| strong adhesive
|
| That's not necessarily malice. Using lots of glue makes
| the device stronger, and making glue that a) glues really
| well (if there's as good as no bezel, how is the screen
| staying attached to the phone otherwise?), b) lasts for
| years in any climate and c) can be easily removed isn't
| an easy problem.
| KETHERCORTEX wrote:
| Using glue is an anti-repair malice by itself. On my
| planet screws and gaskets were invented long ago.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Screws are visible from the outside though.
|
| In any case, all it takes to repair a phone with a glued
| screen is a two face suction grip for about 20 dollars
| and an ordinary hair dryer.
|
| The nasty part of a phone repair, I will admit that, is
| scraping off the glue gunk - I had to repair a Google
| Pixel once where the battery was dead, and during
| removing the glue on the display unit border I apparently
| managed to damage the seal between the OLED display and
| the glass, exposing the OLED to oxygen which led to
| eventual oxidization and a new display panel.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > Screws are visible from the outside though.
|
| Which is a positive in my book, it means I know where to
| start if I need to get into the thing.
| EndShell wrote:
| It not that easy with their glued in batteries on some
| Macbook Pros. You have to essentially use alcohol to
| remove the glue to replace the battery. Absolute PITA.
| They could have used 4 screws and it would be easy to
| replace.
|
| Apple has a high profit margin on their products so I
| expect better. This isn't a cheap laptop from a
| supermarket.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Agreed but on the other side it makes the manufacturing
| more complex - another plastic part and screws as well as
| the time needed compared to just gluing in the battery.
|
| I suspect this is a classic example of corporate
| beancounting at work, even if it just a dollar or two per
| machine, at Apple's volume of millions of machines that's
| nothing to sneeze at.
|
| To fix it, we need laws that require a certain
| repairability score for all devices sold. Then doing the
| "right thing" would be a KPI that competes with pure
| financial incentives.
| EndShell wrote:
| > Agreed but on the other side it makes the manufacturing
| more complex - another plastic part and screws as well as
| the time needed compared to just gluing in the battery. >
| > I suspect this is a classic example of corporate
| beancounting at work, even if it just a dollar or two per
| machine, at Apple's volume of millions of machines that's
| nothing to sneeze at.
|
| They make a high margin on each device and other
| manufacturers can manage it fine at similar price points.
| I believe it was deliberate, they back tracked after
| being highly criticised for it.
|
| > To fix it, we need laws that require a certain
| repairability score for all devices sold. Then doing the
| "right thing" would be a KPI that competes with pure
| financial incentives.
|
| If people are concerned about repairability they should
| seek out manufacturers that offer products where they
| have a good track record.
|
| Laptops, tablets and phones are seen as partly consumable
| by the majority of people and they replace them every few
| years. I am not saying that it is right, I am just saying
| that is the reality. Also not every problem can be
| legislated away and if you make something a KPI it will
| be gamed.
| Someone wrote:
| Engineering is a matter of trade-offs.
|
| So, how do you screw a thin piece of glass onto a phone
| that doesn't have bevels to speak of in such a way that
| you can put it into your pocket for years, and push a
| finger on the center of the screen tens of thousands of
| times without breaking?
|
| Also, if there's room below the screen, the screen will
| bend more than when there isn't, and that will affect
| longevity.
|
| I'm not claiming using glue wasn't done out of malice,
| just that we can't say it is.
| tlavoie wrote:
| Are Mac laptops still glued together? My 2013 MBP needed a
| new battery, which required replacing the following as one
| unit: battery, keyboard, top case, trackpad. The reason is
| that it was all one blob. (And then the charging circuit on
| the motherboard died, and I moved on to ThinkPads I can
| upgrade and deal with myself.)
| StressedDev wrote:
| My last iPhone's battery lasted about 5.5 years before it
| needed to be replaced. Replacing it cost about $90 + tax at
| the Apple store. The bottom line is Apple products do last
| and if you need a new battery, you can get one.
| anjel wrote:
| I'd be fine with planned obsolescence if the mfr had a duty to
| disclose the means of obsolescence and the Product lifespan.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| While we are at it, I want companies to disclose that a brand
| is made with cheaper ingredients or meets a lower quality
| expectation. Can think of some loopholes myself though.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I was in film school in the mid 00s, when RED was just starting
| to sell digital cameras to Hollywood studios. I remember a lot
| of my professors being concerned that we'd lose the archival
| properties of cinema - you can play back a 100 year old movie
| with a bright light and a ratchet - the same stuff you need to
| play back a movie from the 90s. They were concerned there'd be
| too much churn in digital formats.
|
| Just this weekend, I saw a headline that the Looney Tunes box
| set I bought then probably doesn't work anymore, because Warner
| Bros used crappy materials to mint the DVDs and people have had
| them degrade beyond playability.
| xandrius wrote:
| So kind of correct but not quite related?
|
| The old film stuff which survives is mainly due to material
| quality, storage and luck, in that sequence. Those DVD
| started already losing the battle.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Film wasn't always perfect either. A _lot_ of early,
| pre-1950s cinema has been lost because the old nitrate film
| stock degrades over time. And can catch fire.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose#Nitrate_film_fi.
| ..
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Even modern film is often not great, particularly theatre
| prints that aren't explicitly made for archival purposes.
| There was a fascinating YouTube video recently where the
| author pushes back on the purported superiority of fan-
| scanned 4Ks now competing with official, studio-supervised
| restorations:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQwQRFLFDd8
|
| Obviously DNR and bad HDR jobs are kind of their own issue,
| but he focuses specifically on coloring and the notion that
| theatre prints are themselves often wildly inconsistent and
| change over time, so it can be extremely difficult to even
| establish a baseline for what a film was meant to look like
| _or even what it actually looked like upon release_.
|
| As a modest 4K collector myself, it frustrates me when
| certain films seem to sit in indefinite limbo, but Amadeus
| (released this week) looks fabulous and was absolutely
| worth the wait, so I have hopes that the people taking
| their time to do right by films like Ben Hur and The Sound
| of Music are doing so for the right reasons.
| Aloha wrote:
| Thanks for posting that, it was an interesting watch!
| mikepurvis wrote:
| There's a lot of really great film meta-commentary like
| that on YouTube. Nerrel's video about about dynamic range
| and colour gamut in the context of Aliens was a game
| changer for me in appreciating the true potential of the
| UltraHD format:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxOqWYytypg
| jajko wrote:
| DVDs use organic layer for data storage (that rainbowy part
| IIRC). There is no way in chemical reality that that layer
| can last more than 2-3 decades, apart from very few outliers.
| I'd say half-life is somewhere around 15-20 years from what
| I've witnessed.
|
| If you have anything worthy still on DVDs that still works,
| make a backup to keep it.
| MaKey wrote:
| For archival purposes M-DISC can then be used, whith a
| purported lifetime of 1000 years.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I recently found an old spindle of DVDs that I burned a
| while ago, mostly with booty gathered from sailing the
| seas, if you will. I had a 100% success rate with guessing
| which discs would be unreadable just by looking at them --
| the recording layer had degraded so much over time that it
| was apparent to the naked eye.
|
| Luckily this was all stuff I had no issue with discarding,
| but if those discs had contained anything of sentimental
| value, I'd have been quite upset to find that they were
| basically useless now.
|
| > If you have anything worthy still on DVDs that still
| works, make a backup to keep it.
|
| And make sure to make it to multiple other formats,
| preferably including some sort of cloud storage. Solid
| state storage, especially modern small portable drives, are
| great if you use them often, but if you're planning to just
| copy stuff to them and leave them sitting unpowered for a
| long time, you should be aware that over time they too will
| suffer from data corruption. The charges in the storage
| cells don't leak fast, but they do leak.
|
| You gotta actively maintain your backups, even if that just
| means plugging the backup drive in every other month to
| check its' health.
| happycube wrote:
| If done correctly a ~35 year old Laserdisc's glue layers
| are still fine. This depends on the plant and when the disk
| was produced, but Pioneers plants were quite good by the
| late 80's.
|
| Most 1980's CD's are still fine, except for ones made by
| PDO UK.
|
| I'm not sure if the glue layers in DVD are organic or not,
| but I think the rainbow part itself is aluminum.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Thing is, those old films will eventually degrade too unless
| very carefully maintained. I don't think there's
| realistically any storage format that doesn't degrade over
| some period of time. Even things carved into stone will
| weather away over time unless somehow protected.
|
| In an interesting way it's almost that human memory is the
| most durable format -- as long as we remember to care for and
| preserve information, we can keep it around as long as people
| are around; But once people stop caring about it, eventually
| it will fade.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| We have ancient oral traditions that describe
| constellations that no longer exist (the Seven Sisters).
| doi:10.1007/978-3-030-64606-6_11
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Do you mean the Pleiades?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Yes, the Pleiades, which consists of 6 bright points of
| light in the sky, yet is still called the "Seven Sisters"
| (or "Seven Brothers", or similar). Some mythologies tell
| us what happened to the seventh, while others leave the
| discrepancy unresolved - or else, those stories do not
| survive.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's it, data needs to be refreshed regularly, archival
| data needs to be kept 'alive' and transferred to newer
| media on a continuous basis.
| philistine wrote:
| The word unless is unfortunately superfluous in your
| statement. David Fincher just went through a grueling
| restoration process for Seven, and he talked about the
| process and basically said: Eastman Kodak has spent a lot
| of money to convince Hollywood that if your shoot on film
| and keep it in a vault that it will never degrade. It's
| false.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I guess you could stave off the degradation by
| occasionally transferring the film to new media. But
| yeah, the unless is kind of superfluous there, even with
| frequent 'refreshing' film will eventually degrade.
| foobarian wrote:
| I wonder if you could come up with a preservation metric
| tied to time investment or labor. The oral tradition is
| very labor intensive. How does it compare to the labor
| required to mine, refine, and build computers and hard
| drives for a storage service like S3 to preserve an
| equivalent amount of information? Or to chiseling
| everything into giant stone tablets? Printing and re-
| printing books?
| K0balt wrote:
| It's also really hard to make things that last at least X long
| but hardly event more than Y. I know an engineer who spent two
| years of his life making sure the new water pump designs would
| fail at warranty + 50 percent, but only in an annoying, non
| catastrophic way.
|
| Also, plastics that last very specific amounts of time are
| common in specific pieces of assemblies in mechanical timers
| for refrigerator defrosters and the little crossbars that tie
| the vanes in air vent directors together. Replacement timers
| use all nylon gears and last "forever".
|
| The one I personally uncovered is a Honeywell thermostat. It is
| a direct replacement for a mechanical thermostat that would
| frequently fail about 10-15 years out due to corroded/pitted
| contacts. The all electronic replacement does not have this
| problem, but they still failed around 10 years out, but with
| remarkable predictability in my friends apartment complex.
|
| I reverse engineered one. It is powered by the 16-24v signal
| line. It uses a simple potentiometer to set the temperature, no
| clock, memory or other features. It has a battery soldered on
| the circuit board. The battery slowly discharges while the unit
| is on. In about 10 years of operation, the battery voltage
| drops below 1v or so. The battery powers nothing, but the
| microcontroller senses it's voltage and when it is too low, it
| changes the behaviour of the thermostat to randomise the
| temperature cut in/out points by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit ,
| making the thermostat annoyingly unpredictable in a way that is
| very similar to the typical failure mode of the old thermostat
| it replaced.
|
| One notable difference is that the electronic one will never
| fail (unless it is in the off position) to come on at 45F or
| lower, preventing the programmed random behaviour from
| provoking a freeze-up and damage to structures, so I guess
| that's nice?
| salviati wrote:
| This is an incredibly useful investigation! Did you publish
| it somewhere?
| h0l0cube wrote:
| +1 on this. I don't think I've read a story about how
| planned obsolescence is achieved in such a novel and non-
| plausibly deniable way. By that, I mean they haven't just
| cheaped out on materials, they've spent extra to make it
| fail predictably.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The battery powers nothing, but the microcontroller senses
| it's voltage and when it is too low, it changes the behaviour
| of the thermostat to randomise the temperature cut in/out
| points by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit , making the thermostat
| annoyingly unpredictable in a way that is very similar to the
| typical failure mode of the old thermostat it replaced.
|
| This should be criminally investigated and the person who
| ordered it be put in prison for at least a decade.
| salviati wrote:
| Why not at least 9? Or 5?
|
| I think it would be best to focus on the deterrent effect
| for the future: we need a law that makes this business
| strategy not viable. Not on punishing bad behavior that
| already happened. Maybe such law already exists, but we
| need more enforcement. Or a better thought out law.
|
| I don't think it's important if _that_ person gets jail
| time. I would not particularly rejoice at the news. But if
| somehow this practice was made impossible or impractical,
| I'd
| wongarsu wrote:
| One of the reasons for punishment is deterrence. It it
| becomes clear people consistently go to prison for doing
| something like this that will reduce the likelihood of
| people doing this in the future
| joshuaissac wrote:
| Or at least make it mandatory to disclose such behaviours
| before purchase. Failure to disclose should result in the
| vendor and the manufacturer becoming liable for the
| repair/replacement costs (with the vendor similarly able
| to push the costs to the manufacturer if it was not
| disclosed to them either), as well as any actual damages
| resulting from the failure of the product.
| toss1 wrote:
| Need the jail time and a safe harbor if the behavior is
| fully disclosed in advance with all advertising (a simple
| phrase will do such as: "Useful life limited to ~10
| years, details at xyz")
|
| Some people might be fine with a product with a known
| lifespan, or want to pay more for the unlimited life
| version
|
| The penalty should be more like corporate death than
| individual prison, as that often gets fobbed off on some
| scapegoat rather than on the actual manager responsible
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| As much as I agree with the sentiment and desired outcome
| (better/longer lasting products), detecting and enforcing
| that seems horrendously difficult. A great example is the
| VW (and others) emissions scandal. They evaded detection
| for years despite bringing the product for inspection. In
| the case of this thermostat, you would have to prove it
| wasn't a bug and instead malicious intent to send someone
| to jail. You'd need records of who said it needs to be this
| way.
|
| We can't send arbitrary people to jail for bad designs. I
| don't think many people would be an engineer if you knew
| there was possible jail time if you shipped something with
| a bug.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You can fix some of this by having competent and
| independent inspection, which this seems to be. The rest
| - perhaps you can't litigate, but you can publicise, with
| details, and perhaps something a consumer rights watchdog
| or public body would pick up.
| immibis wrote:
| You can already go to jail for engineering something with
| a bug, if it has bad enough effects and the prosecution
| can prove that a reasonable engineer should have fixed
| the bug or not written it.
| mort96 wrote:
| > I know an engineer who spent two years of his life making
| sure the new water pump designs would fail at warranty + 50
| percent, but only in an annoying, non catastrophic way.
|
| Wow what an abhorrent waste of talent and life.
| albrewer wrote:
| In mechanical design, you typically target an order of
| magnitude of stress cycling for product design. In a pump,
| everything stress cycles, so it all needs to be simulated.
| If this was a pump you were going to make ten million of,
| then suddenly every fractional 10th of a cent you save
| becomes the difference between, e.g., having another
| coworker or not. So to balance that with offering a
| reasonable warranty such that there's actually demand for
| this product makes sense.
|
| Before anyone brings it up: sure, a lot of companies just
| pocket this savings or whatever, but a lot don't; you just
| don't hear about them because they're typically midsize
| companies that nobody complains about.
| mort96 wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I feel like you're reading my message
| extremely uncharitably. I'm obviously onboard with the
| idea that nothing lasts forever, and time spent figuring
| out how to increase something's lifespan to "at least X
| years" is obviously valuable, as is time spent figuring
| out how to cut costs without making a product break
| "before X years". But none of that is the same as
| spending time to figure out how to _ensure that something
| breaks_ at the right time.
|
| It matters whether the focus is on reducing costs while
| keeping track of the impact on the product's lifetime, or
| the focus is on reducing the product's lifetime. What I'm
| calling a waste of talent and human life is spending time
| on the latter, and that's what it sounds like my parent
| comment describes their engineer friend doing.
| eschaton wrote:
| Amen, intent matters. And it sounds like in both of the
| cases the OP cited, the intent was to force otherwise-
| unnecessary replacement, which is bad.
| mkipper wrote:
| This can be a pretty blurry line.
|
| If the engineer took some existing product and did
| _nothing_ for 2 years other than design in additional
| failures that show up after the warranty has expired, I
| agree that 's awful. However, I'm very skeptical of that.
| I've worked in some manufacturing orgs who try to pinch
| every possible penny they can, and I've never seen anything
| resembling that level of mustache-twirling villainy in
| engineering. Also, 2 years seems like an incredibly long
| time for someone to spend doing this and nothing else.
|
| It's _much_ more likely that the company asked the engineer
| to reduce the cost of the pump while still hitting the
| product 's requirements (e.g. no failures during warranty
| period plus some margin), and while doing that, the
| engineer found the design was overspeced for those
| requirements and made some changes which reduced the pump's
| expected lifespan while still meeting that requirement.
|
| Unlike what the OP is suggesting, this happens
| _constantly_...it 's what engineering is.
|
| Obviously I'm not OP and I'm reading between the lines
| here, but it's very easy to imagine someone hearing this
| story second-hand and completely misrepresenting it.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Oh i think I saw an AvE video where they explained a cheap
| part being omitted resulted in this exact sort of problem.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| While I don't doubt the behavior, I have a hard time
| believing that a product manager would let an expensive part
| like a battery get added to the BOM if it's only purpose was
| to fail after ten years. Which suggests it performs some sort
| of function, which means this could be a bug rather than a
| malicious act. We will likely never know but I'm always
| willing to assign stupidity rather than malice
| hulitu wrote:
| > While I don't doubt the behavior, I have a hard time
| believing that a product manager would let an expensive
| part like a battery get added to the BOM if it's only
| purpose was to fail after ten years.
|
| It depends how much of the BOM price was the battery.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> The battery powers nothing, but the microcontroller senses
| it's voltage and when it is too low, it changes the behaviour
| of the thermostat to randomise the temperature cut in /out
| points by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit_
|
| This is really neat, if true, but I have to say I'm
| skeptical. This is just too good a story!
| andruby wrote:
| > It has a battery soldered on the circuit board. The battery
| slowly discharges while the unit is on. In about 10 years of
| operation, the battery voltage drops below 1v or so. The
| battery powers nothing
|
| I am not an electrical engineer. Could the microcontroller
| use the battery as some kind of calibration? Or could it have
| another function?
| eschaton wrote:
| So you know of two cases of companies putting in work to
| defraud people by selling products that aren't fit for
| purpose outside their warranty window. Name & shame.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| Agreed. A great example would be the testing of old tvs.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxQS58t39_U
|
| They were often tested to ridiculously high standards with huge
| voltages applied across strenuous tests. And they cost
| accordingly.
|
| It's amazing how cheap things are these days. I think what
| frustrates people more is that the more expensive options don't
| usually last long. Finding the more reliable option is
| fiendishly difficult and it may not exist.
| foobarian wrote:
| > I think what frustrates people more is that the more
| expensive options don't usually last long
|
| Yeah, well put. Just had to replace a dishwasher, and among
| the models of one brand it seems the more expensive models
| just add more moving parts and complexity that, ironically,
| may lead to more issues.
|
| Don't get me started about clothes. The quality and weight of
| the fabric is almost completely disconnected from the price.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| In my years in PD, I never saw intentional product
| obsolescence. Instead, I saw a lot of targets based on use
| metrics, i.e. design for this many years, exposure, etc. The
| problem is testing - you can't actually test for time in real
| time. Instead, we try to develop elaborate accelerated testing
| schemes that try to closely capture consumer intent. The
| problems with accelerated testing schemes are four fold:
|
| 1) They're a relative benchmark. They don't represent how the
| product will perform in absolute terms, only how it will do in
| this standardized bench test against other products.
|
| 2) They might miss some things that are coupled together that
| don't fully get felt out until you're over longer periods of
| time.
|
| 3) They're imperfect if the use cases for a consumer product
| will be complex. An easy example is a car. Auto OEMs will try
| their best with their standardized accelerated testing
| scheduled for durability, corrosion, etc -> but the consumer
| will always end up doing shit that is totally reasonable but
| not in the accelerated testing scheme )or under provisioned).
|
| 4) For complex products, a lot of accelerated testing might
| happen on only a subsystem level and may not fully map to the
| final product.
|
| Although these downsides are real, accelerated testing is still
| great and, with good planning and experience, can catch a lot
| of problems.. but it tends to always miss something and the
| above 4 points can synergistically work together to make a
| "design big" more obvious when in the field/hands of the
| customers!
| userbinator wrote:
| _but older hard drives like the ones I've shown above are
| remarkably tolerant of being opened. That's not to say I would
| leave it operating without the cover for an extended period of
| time, but for quick data recovery purposes in a decently clean
| environment, it's fine._
|
| The airflow while the platters are spinning keeps dust off them,
| and as long as particles don't stick and cause excessive "thermal
| asperity", the heads will still work. The latter is what makes
| transient bad sectors appear.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| I had two hard drives sitting on the shelves just suddenly refuse
| to work after not touching them for years... Xbox360 hdd went
| south, a seagate st4000dm000 too. interesting... what is aging in
| these modernish drives that makes them go south?
| MBCook wrote:
| Could be similar things. A rubber gasket going gooey, grease
| freezing up, anything to make the mechanics off even a little.
|
| The tolerances are so tiny, I doubt it takes much at all.
| tfvlrue wrote:
| A similar thing happened to my Brother laser printer. It has a
| tiny rubber piece inside that serves as a bumper to quiet down a
| component that clicks while the paper travels through the
| printer. Over time, it gets sticky and winds up holding the
| component too long, which confuses the printer into thinking it
| has a paper jam, causing it to suddenly abort the print job
| partway through. The fix was to simply remove the rubber pad and
| it was back to normal -- albeit a little "clickier" than when it
| started!
|
| Details if anyone is curious:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/r04j3s/trying_to_...
| hlehmann wrote:
| I had the same problem when my previous Brother printer was
| nearly ten years old, I did the same trick, and it worked. Most
| components might last almost forever, but things like rubber or
| glue, not so much.
| ernst_mulder wrote:
| Same kind of problem with an old HP LaserJet 1300 we still use.
| It began by it occasionally picking up multiple sheets of paper
| and jamming. It gradually got worse until the printer wasn't
| usable anymore.
|
| The issue turned out to be the solenoid for the pick-up
| mechanism. When activated it should cause the pick-up mechanism
| to turn once. The solenoid once apparently had a small rubber
| pad to reduce noise. This had turned into goo and the solenoid
| would stick causing the mechanism to turn multiple times.
|
| Fixed by removing the left-over goo and a piece of tape. Ten
| minute fix.
| neilv wrote:
| Anyone know whether this is the cause of the stiction problem in
| Quantum 105 drives in the early 1990s?
| mleo wrote:
| I just found my old Flip Camera in bin of old electronics today
| and its rubber case was a sticky mess. In the bin is a bunch of
| old hard drives that haven't been touched in a decade as well. I
| imagine there is nothing on there I need that hasn't been
| transferred elsewhere, but also just curious if any of them work.
| billfor wrote:
| I use a hairdryer to start my old scsi disk drives. I wonder if
| it loosens the rubber enough for the head to move.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Ahhh, Conner. My second computer (a 386sx-33) had a whopping two
| Conner IDE 120MB drives... until it didn't. I can remember the
| clicking as those drives would spin up... until one fine day the
| clicks died and POST threw an error wondering why my hard drive
| wasn't ready.... and then the drive began clicking again. One
| soft reset later and I was back in business, but even as a teen
| back then I knew that was a sign from PC-Hulud to immediately
| start pulling everything off. I had always assumed the problem
| was stiction of the read/write head w/r/t the platters. Neat.
| shrubble wrote:
| I've recently got into old typewriters and have had the same
| problem with the rubbery belt that goes from the motor spindle to
| the larger wheel that spins the inner roller that drives the keys
| and returns the carriage. They turn into a very sticky goo, and
| those exact size belts are not available.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Very interesting for me as I have a deceased friend's SCSI disk
| containing his novel in progress.
|
| Now to find a SCSI card and cable ...
| dougg3 wrote:
| Another option, if you can't find a card, is a ZuluSCSI or
| BlueSCSI V2 in initiator mode to image the drive to an SD card.
| It's pretty nifty! I've recently even been using ZuluSCSI as a
| USB-SCSI bridge with USB MSC initiator mode.
| bpye wrote:
| Some old Pentax SLRs have a similar issue [0]. I suspect there
| are many such examples, even in more modern electronics.
|
| [0] -
| https://www.flickr.com/groups/891454@N24/discuss/72157680498...
| TwoFerMaggie wrote:
| ha! just thought of the same..
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43240394
| fionaellie wrote:
| This reminds me of what happens to that rubberized coating that
| was so popular on plastic peripherals a long time ago. I have a
| relatively recent Ubiquiti AmpliFi device and it's just...sticky.
| I can't get rid of the stickiness no matter what I try.
| mikeodds wrote:
| This soft touch plastic is a plague of early 2000s cars too
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| having flashbacks to scrubbing what must have been several
| square meters of the stuff off of the interior surfaces of a
| mk4 volkswagen golf
| MaKey wrote:
| You should be able to remove the stickiness with lighter fluid.
| mrspuratic wrote:
| By coincidence I found an old Toshiba external USB drive in a
| drawer last week when I was rummaging for a cable, a black
| STORE.E one with the (now sticky and nasty) rubberised coating.
| I just powered it up: happily it still works so I guess no
| internal rubber bumper. Worst application of rubber so far was
| on some old Stanley screwdrivers, now unusable unless you want
| to apply solvent to your hands after use. I got those maybe 15+
| years ago, put me off Stanley branded tools. Now I have a
| perfectly good beech handled Wera set which (sigh) Wera appear
| to have stopped making.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| I've thrown out an expensive chefs knife this week with a sticky
| rubber handle. Also two pairs of boots where the rubber bases
| have just crumbled. I contacted the manufacturer of one of them
| because they were a very expensive 'best pair' and had hardly
| ever been worn. The reply was that boots have to be worn every
| few months to prevent this, and not covered by warranty. I wonder
| if all polymers/plastics are like this, use it or lose it.
| Entropy rebooted.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Unfortunately rubber deteriorates as it absorbs moisture. I
| forgot the name of the reaction, but keeping these things in a
| well ventilated, cool and dry place extends their life a lot.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| Maybe hydrolosis, which doesn't sound particularly useful for
| hiking boots, especially with UK weather.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| I've had good luck using bicarbonate of soda as a mild abrasive
| on knives and saucepan handles with that horrible rubberised
| soft-touch coating. On good quality items it removes the
| stickiness. On poor quality items it removes the soft-touch
| coating, which is still a good result in my book!
| stuaxo wrote:
| Interesting. I have an old 80mb IDE from an ancient laptop that
| won't read, maybe this is happening.
|
| Before opening it I'm going to try it in an older desktop as it
| may be that it just doesn't like USB IDE enclosures.
| amatecha wrote:
| Hmmm, I wonder if there are similar tricks for newer hard drives.
| I have a 2010 iMac that has a seized or "otherwise non-booting"
| hard drive, just randomly wouldn't boot one day. I can only guess
| there is a mechanical problem like this, because those aluminum
| iMacs were notorious for running too hot internally and basically
| overheating the HDD. Same problem on my wife's 2008 iMac, that
| machine burned through 3+ HDDs due to the heat issue.
| amelius wrote:
| This is why I keep my drives in a helium chamber.
| TwoFerMaggie wrote:
| The most common issue with Pentax ME Super, one of the most
| popular consumer-grade manual focus SLRs, was caused by a
| degraded rubber ring near the mirror assembly.
|
| https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Pentax+ME+Super+Mirror+Box+Serv...
|
| The ones without such an issue is still often recommended for
| hobbyists who want to get into analog photography today, because
| they are generally inexpensive, compatible with very nice lenses,
| and there are so many of them circulating still for parts and
| repair.
|
| Given that they were made in the late 70s to early 80s, and the
| shutter mechanism is fully controlled by electronics (instead of
| mechanical), it's quite amazing that the rest of the camera
| mostly held up over nearly 5 decades.
| pathartl wrote:
| Didn't realize this was an issue! I must be one of the lucky
| ones
| adrian_b wrote:
| Many years ago, I have lost valuable data stored on Sony QIC
| magnetic tapes (QIC = quarter-inch cartridge), because those
| magnetic tape cartridges contained a rubber belt that was used to
| move the magnetic tape inside the cartridges, when they were
| inserted in a tape drive.
|
| After many years of storage, the rubber belts had become fragile
| and any attempt to move the magnetic tape turned the belts into
| dust, making the cartridge unreadable.
|
| The LTO magnetic tape cartridges used today are much more robust,
| because the cartridge is simpler and it hopefully no longer
| includes any parts that are susceptible to rapid aging.
|
| At that time, i.e. 30-40 years ago, rubber belts were used
| because they ensured in a simple mechanical way a constant moving
| speed for the magnetic tape. Later, the electronic alternatives
| for ensuring a constant tape speed by varying the speed of an
| electric motor have become cheap enough to eliminate the need for
| such belts.
| threemux wrote:
| Man this guy's posts are always awesome. The other place I've
| seen gooey rubber/plastic like this is on certain models of cars
| after many years of service. Sometimes even the steering wheel
| can have this effect which is gross
| millerm wrote:
| It seems that just about everything I have owned in the past 20
| years that has had some sort of rubberized thing has turned into
| this goo. From knobs on digital music equipment, toys, coffee
| grinders... all of it. So very irritating.
| aequitas wrote:
| I wonder if this is also the reason freezing a broken harddrive
| makes it temporary work again. I have used this trick a few times
| with success. Either keeping the disk in the freezer with the
| cable to the outside or putting a bottle or frozen liquid on top
| of it after it has been in the freezer (but beware of
| condensation).
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