Hi there. I am knocking up a prototype of something for a friend (yeah, I couldn't be more vague then that, hey!)... anyway, I somehow need to get the motor in an old hard drive to run. That's all I need to do for now. All I know about the motor is that it has 3 terminals.

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge when it comes to HDD motors? Are they normally DC or steppers? If it is a stepper, how would the coils be likely to be arranged (there's three terminals on it).

Any thoughts or wisdom would be much appreciated.

I think in the end I'll have to pull out ye olde scope and see what happens when I spin the spindle, but I don't have the time right now, so I figured if anyone has any pointers in the right direction that'd be a good start.

Thanks folks.