this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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DON'T DO THIS, at best it'll do nothing and at worst (muuch more likely) you'll short and kill your HDD.
The whole point of contacts is that they aren't soldered, the transmit current by physical contact. There's a matching pair on the HDD chassis:
They're not soldered, as in soldered to pins on the aluminium chassis. Look at the image I posted, have I soldered anything from that board to the aluminium chassis? No. The're solder cushions to act as pillows for the metal head/preamp pins, which leads to having wider contact surface and no oxidation, which in turn leads to better conductivity, no head fly-bys and no head crashes when the head looses contact with the control board.
BTW, they used to make them with solder cushions, but stopped after a while, cuz those disks could go through hell and back. Remove the boards from some old early 2000's drives, you'll see what I'm talking about.
The contacts are gold, which definitely doesn't oxidize any more than solder considering it, y'know, doesn't oxidize in air at all ever. The solder doesn't really add any contact surface area, and even if it did, it makes no difference for digital signals. "Better conductivity" doesn't improve digital sigs either. And why would the contacts ever disconnect?
I can't confirm the last paragraph, but HDD manufacturers could just move the PCB closer to the chassis and/or make the contacts' springs a bit stiffer to achieve the exact same thing, which is slightly more pressure between the contacts. That's literally all you're getting here.
This looks like gold plated to you?
When will people learn, don't trust everything you're told, check for yourself.
Plase take a look at the two, and tell me the contact area is the same. Solder wire is 60% tin, 40% lead (Sn60Pb40). They are both soft metals at room temperature, thus, they displace when pressure is applied on them, like from a needle for example, and they make a nice bed for the needle to lay in, maximizing surface area.
Oh, now I just know you know nothing about electronics.
You do know that it's not just I/O data that goes through those pins, right? Look at some of the buses on the PCB, not all of them are the tiny, there are a few thay are quite thick. You know what they are? They're the magnetic coil control pins, the thing that makes the heads move accross the surface of the disk... you know, the thing that fails when there's a head crash. It takes power to move the head, thus, it's not just a signal now, is it.
Look at the doodle again, and you'll see I'm right.
I didn't come up with this idea on my own, as I said, I looked at how things were done in the past, when drives were really good. Everyone soldered the contacts for the pins back in the day, and then, they just stopped. WD were the first, others followed.
Look, I'm sorry but I have better things to do than arguing about why putting blobs of solder on your HDD's contacts isn't a good idea. I'm not gonna stop you, but I don't think you've convinced anyone.
I know, you ran out of arguments.
Gold does not oxidize in atmosphere. You are spouting nonsense you do not understand.
This looks like gold plated to you?
You've never actually removed a board after years of use to see what those look like, have you...