...a staggering twenty megabytes of disk space

[dejitaru]

Yeah, those were the days.
I was looking at a 6MB hard drive platter 5 feet across.
Now that we're all big, bad, and advanced, how difficult would it be to build a small hard drive by hand?

 

[Mday]

depends...

do you have the capabilities of doing vapor deposition to create the data layers on the platters?

can you work in a clean room as to not even get any stray atoms onto a platter, thus rendering some megabytes of the platter unusuable?

can you wire the read and write heads and keep them aligned without causing problems?

 

[Peter]

When I look at the 5-MByte brick I still use for power supply testing , I'd say you couldn't even achieve that one on any hobby bench.

It's a full height (that's two of today's drive bays, folks!) 5,25" drive, made by BASF.

 

[dejitaru]

Originally posted by: Mday
depends...

do you have the capabilities of doing vapor deposition to create the data layers on the platters?

can you work in a clean room as to not even get any stray atoms onto a platter, thus rendering some megabytes of the platter unusuable?

can you wire the read and write heads and keep them aligned without causing problems?

Quite possibly. Yet I'm storing nothing critical, so an error or two is acceptable. I could store a few hundred k on a roll of toilet paper.

I'm not going into mass production, I just want to build a drive from components.

 

[stebesplace]

If you have the means and the motive, and you have a clean shop, go ahead and build it, report back once your done. I'de love to hear what happens.

-Steve