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Hi guys and gals, I need some help in powering a old HDD motor. Could any of the electronic experts here help me out? Could a brushless fan's circuits potentially power it?

What I do know is that the motor has 1 ground, and 2 positive terminals. What I would need is to be able to switch power on and off between the 2 positives in a alternating fashion.

EDIT: I intenionally put this in the Modding section, before some of you start moaning. If I get the power issues sorted I'll reveal all.


Edit 2: See page 2 for the mod.

Dude, how fast do you need it to switch?

Dunno, probably really fast like 1/500th of a second or even faster.

I have not seen or worked with a HDD motor before. Two power inputs usually mean direction change or speed control or probably alternate on and off cycles. Can you post a pic of those wires and maybe what drive it is?

I'll have to take some pics tonight, Don't know what make the drive is, but on the pcb there is Seagate markings, but nowhere else on the drive. But I suspect the motor works similarly to brushless fans.

BTW, if I connect one of the pins to ground on my PSU, and take a wire from +5V and brush it against ever of the other two pins so it keeps breaking and rejoining the circuit I can get it running, though at a low speed. That is why I think it should switch between 2 positives.

Actually, it should switch between a positive(eg +5V) and a negative(eg -5V) voltage, in order to change the direction of the magnetic field which is generated inside the motor.So faster switching between pos and neg = faster change of magnetic field = faster spinning motor. Ground would be a common connection to earth and is typically 0V.

So, who here would be able to build me a circuit to do this?

Or, if someone could modify the pcb to keep the motor spinning, as it is now, it starts the motor, then stops. Presumably because the heads aren't connected to the pcb anymore.

Actually, I'm wrong.

Check out this site
http://homepages.which.net/~paul.hills/ ... sBody.html

Sorry for the confusion on my part :stupid:

Whooosh! Goes that page over my head.

I'll post pics of the motor tonight, to give you guys a better idea.

Ok so if you touch the 5V to either supply wire the motor starts spinning? If that is the case then, and I am just guessing here, this might be a type of stepper motor. So in the case of this motor you would have 4 steps (only having 2 wires)00 01 10 11. So you would need some kind of logic counter doing the running of this motor. I can explain to you how to make a circuit to run this thing but some of the components you would need to get from an electronics shop. You could possibly use your serial port to run this but you FIRST have to add these components.

Hmmm. Okay, but the drives pcb has all the necessary components, If I could somehow fool it into spinning the motor....

I also have a Nidec 59-004045-000 motor which I can use and it's from a WD Caviar HDD. Model no. AC22000-32LA. But this motor has 4 connections. What little info I get on this motor is that it has 12 coils. The controller chip is a ST L6252 ES4

Some info, look at the "3 phase pm" heading

http://www.abrij.org/~bri/hw/motour.html

More info http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/sit ... XGrrlPZL8l

you could try using a flip flop circuit. you can buy kits. it uses a 555 flasher timer.

ive got some funny one on an old floppy drive. maybe i should try see if i can get it to spin and let you know what i find.

Thanks for the help guys, I got it working: I didn't connect it properly

So here goes with the modding part: I made a fan by doing the following.

I took the platter from the drive, and placed a vinyl stencil on it.


Then I cut in the exposed lines with a hack-saw. Mounted the platter on the spindle and bent the blades to my liking.




Action shots!




Warning!! this thing will mess your fingers up. So if you build one and start it keep your digits clear.

Now don't ask me why I built it, I was bored at work mkay.

Now don't ask me why I built it, I was bored at work mkay.

LOL

Well, now you have a super-fast fan. (unless it isn't running at the full speed of your regular HDD).

Should make for some awesome cooling, though it would probably be a bit noisy.

How much noise does it make?

LOL, Was that Platter part of mr.40GB hdd?

It could make an awesome anti theft device... If someone at a lan want to steal your ram and tries to stop the fan with his fingers... Well lets just leave it @ that

Dude thats awesome, now show us some shots of how to do it.
Ike thats twisted. attach it to your steering wheel rather

U should try cut stuff with it...

Awesome. How noisy is it? Harddrives use FDB bearings so i'm guessing it's relatively quiet considering the rpm?

Well, currently it is relatively noisy, but not like the irritating whine of some 80mm fans. Once I get my hands on a dremel I'll remove the burs on the blades which will make it quieter.

I will make a how to a bit later.

@ Anthro. I already put a piece of paper into it. It ripped it to pieces.

hey hman, see you finally got your hdd fan working - well done mate!