How to make an HDD to Spin Constantly without to be connected to motherboard - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: 2X
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2022, 07:20:26 pm
content: Hello,there is way to make an HDD to spin constantly at full speed without to be connected to motherboard? The HDD motor if I don't make a mistake is step motor and needs pulses to rotate. There any circuit or kit (from ebay) that takes only DC voltage (like sata power connector) and makes the HDD to spin constantly at full speed without to be connected to motherboard?

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2022, 08:12:28 pm
content: If you first connect it to a computer and disable AAM/APM to remove any kind of power saving feature, it might keep spinning with just applying power... not sure though!What's the purpose of this? Making Persistence Of Vision LED clock?

author: 2X
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2022, 08:19:28 pm
content: I want to add a sandpaper on it in order to sand old electronis screwdrivers. I don't know if it works or this is stupid but I would like to try it.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2022, 08:31:17 pm
content: Quote from: 2X on June 12, 2022, 08:19:28 pmHDDs normally use PMSM for the spindle. I seriously doubt if the torque will be enough to sharpen a screwdriver.Stepper motors were used in very old HDDs for head movement and were replaced with voice-coil head movement later.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2022, 08:42:03 pm
content: It will error and shut down when the heads fail to read the servo data. You'd need to scrap the control board and connect the motor to a compatible sensorless BLDC motor controller, and as Benta points out there almost certainly wont be enough torque to be useful.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2022, 09:18:33 pm
content: Here was a mod to turn an obsolete hard drive into a disk access indicator:https://web.archive.org/web/20090114191129/http://www.zapwizard.com:80/mods/RealHD-IDE/index.html

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2022, 11:15:36 pm
content: Most hard drives will spin continuously if you just connect power, all of the older ones did. You can also drive the spindle motor with a brushless ESC made for RC models, I did that once with a dead 3.5" server drive that had about 8 platters. Spun it up to probably 20,000 RPM before I ran out of voltage from the bench PSU. I was starting to get nervous that it might fail catastrophically, it sounded like a jet engine spooling up.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2022, 11:42:11 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 12, 2022, 11:15:36 pm

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2022, 11:54:54 pm
content: Hah! That's pretty much exactly what I did, except I used a drive with much heavier 3.5" platters and it had a stack of them about 1.5" high. I didn't have anything connected to monitor the speed but it was loud and moving a lot of air. I found that some ESCs work much better than others for this sort of abuse, in my case I had good luck with a Turnigy Plush model.