Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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The phrase 'crumpled heap' comes to mind.

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Hard Drive Head Cleaner

 no more dirty head
  (+6, -4)
(+6, -4) 		  [vote for,
against]

It happens to your turntable. It happens to your VCR (or Betamax if you were so foolish as to buy one). It happens to your CD and DVD players. It even happens to your hard drive. The difference is that until now, all of these have been cleanable EXCEPT the hard drive. Well those days are now over forever.

NHOBO Industries proudly introduces the Hard Drive Head Cleaner. No more unsightly head lint! No more sticky actuator grease! No more platter scum! With the new Hard Drive Head Cleaner, your hard drive appearance and performance will be restored.

Simply plug the patented dongle into the drive interface (IDE/ATA/PATA, SCSI and SATA), reattach the data cable, and all your worries are gone. Available exclusively at Gnuegg and TigerShark Direct for only $19.95.

Coming soon – the NHOBO Flash Memory Cleaner.

—nuclear hobo, Jun 13 2007

Geek on Everest http://www.ueverest...life.aspx?postId=19
Hard drives don't work well in thin air [Freefall, Jun 13 2007]

"Tape head cleaner" mp3 _22Tape_20head_20cleaner_22_20mp3
Exactly the same thing (if your MP3 player is hard drive based) [hippo, Jun 14 2007]

New seagate drive http://www.engadget...-ee25-2-hard-drive/
All weather 4x4 drive [TIB, Jun 22 2007]

Data sheet for [TIB]'s link http://www.seagate..../disc/ds_ee25_2.pdf
[Ling, Jun 23 2007]

Wikipedia: Video Cassette Recording https://en.wikipedi..._Cassette_Recording
Mentioned in my anno. The other "VCR", a system of cassettes and VCRs. [notexactly, Oct 03 2019]

[link]






       I'm sure you put a lot of time and effort into this, but i stopped reading when it said "No more dirty head". That brought me back to when i was 15. Ah to be young again.
—punk_punker, Jun 13 2007
   

       Betamax was a TYPE of VCR. VHS was the other (major) one, the one that lasted until DVDs took over the world.
—Galbinus_Caeli, Jun 13 2007
   

       So how's it work? [-]   

       Not that you couldn't sell zillions to people even though it does nothing at all.
—baconbrain, Jun 13 2007
   

       [bacon] right the second time. It doesn't work, but nor do hard drives - which are of course hermetically sealed - gunk up. [+]   

       [edit] I meant to say, "are of course NOT hermetically sealed." Honest, I did. Erm...
—david_scothern, Jun 13 2007
   

       Hard drives are not hermetically sealed. They have a vent port to allow internal and external pressure to equalize. This port is, however, fitted with a very fine filter to keep out dust and dirt.   

       This is why you're not supposed to use a cold computer in a warm room. The warm, moist air will enter the hard drive, condensing on everything inside, causing a head crash and loss of data.   

       This is also why hard drives don't last long at high altitudes (read the accounts of laptop use on Everest). The low pressure results in reduced viscous support of the heads over the platters, again causing head crash and data loss.   

       [NHOBO], this is snake oil. It provides a non-workable cure to a non-existent problem. But since it is worded as humor, I'll withhold my vote.
—Freefall, Jun 13 2007
   

       ROFL - can I have some shares, [nukehobo] ? Pretty please?   

       The link is interesting - the description of why hard drives fail at altitude is excellent, I'd not thought about it before. It crosses my mind that it wouldn't be hard to make a sealed hard drive - probably filled with nitrogen rather than ambient air. The casing would need a little redesign and would probably be a bit heavier to withstand one bar pressure difference between the inside and outside (or 0.5 bar if you design it to be underpressured at sea level).   

       Presumably existing (non-sealed) hard drives are designed to be okay at airliner cabin pressures? And how about in hyperbaric chambers (for the use of divers wiling away the boring decompression time)?
—Cosh i Pi, Jun 14 2007
   

       <at Everest Camp IV, 26,000 ft.>   

       "The weather looks good, but it's going to close in later, so we'd better get started now. Ready to make the final approach to the summit?"   

       "Hold on, I've just got to check my email and the halfbakery ..."   

       [Cosh i Pi], I've got a special offer for people who want to get in on the ground floor -
—nuclear hobo, Jun 14 2007
   

       [nukehobo] I'm not sure which way up pyramid sales pyramids are. Either way, one probably has less far to fall from the ground floor, I suppose... 8~)
—Cosh i Pi, Jun 14 2007
   

       //Hard drives don't work well in thin air//   

       Also available: Pure, mountain spring, natural canned oxygen for hard drives in stuffy aircrafts.
—Ling, Jun 14 2007
   

       //Hard drives don't work well in thin air//   

       That's probably why they have a tram lift system up the peak in Hong Kong.
—skinflaps, Jun 14 2007
   

       see link...
—hippo, Jun 14 2007
   

       A useless invention for a non-existant problem.   

       [-]
—wolstech, Jun 14 2007
   

       [wolstech] I think [nukehobo] knows that, somehow. I think we all do. It's generated some interesting discussion though, and Freefall's link is interesting and genuine.
—Cosh i Pi, Jun 14 2007
   

       ok - here's a late-night dumb thought from The Incredible Bulk (subject to review after my nightly four hours of beauty rest) :   

       a hard drive platter somewhat resembles a tesla-turbine, and in fact relies on the same physics to support the r/w head (adhesion and viscosity). if the aforementioned pressure equalization vent was placed close to the center of the platter such that it could behave as an air intake at the point of lowest pressure, wouldn't, as the drive spun up to speed, air be inhaled and pressurized against the casing?   

       the idea being that no matter your altitude, the turbine would always try to equalize the pressure inside the case to an engineered point, proportional to turbine speed. A turbocharged hdd.   

       of course, at almost 10 000 m, the system may still have trouble generating enough pressure to float the head without a significant increase in turbine speed. why, i wonder, would someone use a conventional hdd under these conditions? a solid-state memory solution would seem more reliable. the data is quite valuable after all.
—TIB, Jun 15 2007
   

       [TIB] Technological inertia. It's only very recently that solid state memory with capacities comparable to hard drives have become available.   

       Today, you could indeed have a solid state memory with more capacity in the same volume and weight as a hard drive. The price would be high, but still a very small part of the cost of an Everest expotition.
—Cosh i Pi, Jun 15 2007
   

       Oh, humour. Well, now I feel like platter scum. Fishbone removed.
—baconbrain, Jun 15 2007
   

       [Cosh i pi] - Upon further reading of the discussion, my [-] has changed to a [+]
—wolstech, Jun 17 2007
   

       you should be using solid state memory anyway, that way you dont have to worry about moving parts
—costellogroup, Jun 23 2007
   

       [costellogroup] Solid state memory is still a trifle expensive compared with hard disk drives (although for Everest expeditions the price surely shouldn't be an issue).   

       Anyway, [nuclearhobo] has a proposal for a Flash memory cleaner, too 8~)
—Cosh i Pi, Jun 24 2007
   

       // Betamax was a TYPE of VCR. //   

       So was VCR: [link]
—notexactly, Oct 03 2019
   
      
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