A peculiar issue is plaguing vintage computer enthusiasts and data archivists - old hard drives from the 1990s are failing due to deteriorating rubber components. The problem particularly affects Quantum ProDrive and Conner hard drive models that were commonly used in Apple Macintosh computers.
The issue manifests when these drives refuse to start properly. Upon powering up, the disk platters spin but the read/write heads remain stuck in their parked position near the center, causing the drive to shut down after a few failed attempts.
The root cause? Two small rubber bumpers inside the drive that have turned into sticky goo over decades. These bumpers were originally designed to prevent the head assembly from moving too far in either direction. As the rubber degrades, it becomes adhesive-like, preventing the drive's voice coil motor from moving the heads.
"The voice coil motor controlling the head isn't strong enough to overcome this sticky rubber," explains a vintage computing expert who has documented the problem. "The head just sits there until the drive's firmware gives up."
While opening hard drives is generally discouraged, these older models are surprisingly tolerant of brief exposure to air. Tech enthusiasts have developed temporary fixes involving manually unsticking the heads once the drive is running. Some have even created specialized plastic inserts, available on eBay, to prevent the heads from contacting the degraded bumpers.
This discovery serves as a stark reminder about the impermanence of data storage. Even carefully preserved hard drives can fail due to internal components breaking down in unexpected ways. For collectors and archivists working to preserve vintage software and data, this sticky situation highlights the importance of maintaining multiple backups across different storage media.
The affected drives range in capacity from 40 MB to 500 MB, modest by today's standards but representative of an important era in computing history. As more of these drives succumb to the gooey rubber problem, valuable historical data risks being lost forever unless rescued by knowledgeable technicians.