Yeah, might be. The grease in the bearings is somewhat perishable too, might have "dried up" during the years. Never seen gas tight bearings in a HDD, it's always regular ZZ (dustproof) ones.

Getting a new drive is probably the best idea after all, just about anything will be more reliable and less noisy than that old thing, but if you really want to use it, try working the heads by running some random read/write benchmark app. With a bit of luck it might loosen up.

Edit: also, forget about opening it up. You'd need a proper cleanroom, the screw tightening torque list for that specific model, perhaps some special tools, and probably also quite a bit of experience to be sure to not make matters worse.

Thanks, I think I will try the benchmark app method first.
If the drive does die completely on me, then I might try opening it up and see if I can "grease" the parts a bit 🤣

jesolo wrote:

Thanks, I think I will try the benchmark app method first.
If the drive does die completely on me, then I might try opening it up and see if I can "grease" the parts a bit 🤣

Well, if it is the bearings, it's gonna be hard to replace the lubricant in them. As mentioned, they're double shielded/closed.

You could try putting them in an high grade motor oil bath, heat it up to whatever max temperature the oil manufacturer recommends, let it cool down, and then repeat the same thing a few times, hoping that some oil wil seep in and loosen up the old grease. No guarantees it will work though, and even if some oil seeps in, there's no way to know if it's compatible with the grease. It's gonna be a longshot, and it might even make matters worse, but then again, perhaps you got nothing to lose 😀

A few scandisk with check surface area scans from DOS will probably do as well.

If you do decide to open it up and end up not being able to fix it, pull the rare earth magnets out and use them for fun things. 😀 They are extremely powerful (you can't pull them apart, you have to slide them apart).