drive works better upside down :)

A mate passed away a couple of years ago and his studio have been left as it was when he died, today I went there to grab the drives from the computers as people are saying they want their music, which is fair enough., Anyway one of the external drives is an old seagate and clicking like hell, I don't think it has been used for years, Put it upside down, and it seems to work better, very strange. Once the data is removed, it can die,
Shows how old it is, the drive have 4 partitions because of the restrictions of fat.

All the electric was still on in the studio, which is in the cellar of his house his Wife did not even know, so electric was being used for 2 years, not a lot, but it all adds up.
1 drive down, any 13 to go.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Shows how old it is, the drive have 4 partitions because of the restrictions of fat.

FAT 16 I suspect then... rather than FAT 32...? So pre-dates the year 2000 ??

Upside down can help if platters are sticking because they haven't been used, but as you say could be 'lifed'. Get data off quick. Or you're looking at something like Spinrite (new 6.1 version due imminently solving the old disk size issues).

In reply to a post by jchamier:

FAT 16 I suspect then... rather than FAT 32...? So pre-dates the year 2000 ??

Upside down can help if platters are sticking because they haven't been used, but as you say could be 'lifed'. Get data off quick. Or you're looking at something like Spinrite (new 6.1 version due imminently solving the old disk size issues).

Oh yeah, it will be fat 16, I got it off a 233 machine that uses windows 95, that is why it has not been used for years as the machine have not been used for 15 years if not more. Need to help them sort it all out at some point, there are musical instruments and all sorts down there, told his wife to flog them. Even my old Amiga 500 is there, I can have that back if I want to.

I forgot about spinrite to be honest, thankfully the data is now off it and on my nas, the other drives are hopefully ok, going to take a while to sort them.
It was just amazing the drive worked upside down, still clicking like hell.
Lot of .pub files on the drive, which is MS publisher, i have office 2000 here with publisher, I will see if that will install on this machine