> Like I said, the drive'll be in a dumpster otherwise anyway.  I may ask at
> the computer center and see if they have such a setup, though I won't hold
> my breath....  Otherwise, I'll probably do my best with whatever's lying
> around... maybe work with it in an area with zero ventilation and/or air
> movement... and of course, use rubber gloves, short sleeves, and
> basically... if it can't be fixed, no harm done.  If it works for a while
> and crashes... no great loss... after all, it'd mainly be using the
> MkLinux box as an NFS server for everything but its root partition anyway. 
> :-) 

I doubt it will work. I asked around, and a few folks here have worked at
hard drive fab lines (the guy who worked at Quantum is out today :-(
and they are much cleaner than I think you'll ever get.

HD fab lines are somewhere between class 10 and class 1000 (a measure of the
number of particles per cubic yard I think). Uncontrolled hallways are
probably class 1,000,000 or higher. The zero ventilation area you mentioned
would probably get to about class 100,000. You'd probably really need class
100 to make this trick work.

Fry's has a nice 2.1 GB Seagate for about $200...

Take care,

Bill