Page "Stiction" Paragraph 12

In the early models of hard disk drives stiction was known to cause read / write heads to stick the platters of the hard drive due to the breakdown of lubricants used to coat the platters.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s as the size of hard drive platters decreased from the older 8 " and 5. 25 " sizes to 3. 5 " and smaller, manufacturers continued to use the same calendering processes and lubricants used on the older, larger drives.

The much tighter space caused much higher internal operating temperatures in these newer smaller drives, often leading to an accelerated breakdown of the surface lubricants into their much stickier components.

When the drive was powered off and would cool down ( say at the end of the day when a user went home and shut off their PC ), these now-broken-down lubricants would become quite viscous and sticky, sometimes causing the read / write heads to literally stick to the platter.

One response to this problem was to remove the affected drive and strike it gently but firmly on the side, then try to start it while connected to but not necessarily fitted inside the machine.

This might break the heads free for long enough to spin up the drive and recover the data from it without powering it down.

Once started, it would continue to run indefinitely, but might not start again if powered down.

Instead of tapping the drive, rotating it sharply by hand could start it.

In most Maxtor hard drives, if the heads are stuck to the platters, the drive might make " music " from either the heads trying to move or from the platters trying to spin up.