apart from blowing out the dust and cleaning the heads, there isnt much you can do...
however, at the same time, if the power supply to the drive is noisy from bad capacitors, youll have errors trying to read/write the disk.
Life story: (i know, people hate these). I have a macintosh LCIII. the disks started giving me trouble, read one disk in another machine worked fine. read it in the LCIII gave me unreadable error. but sometimes it worked. I recapped the few capacitors that were on the LCIII system board. everything is just peachy once again
when tackling a capacitor job, BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL!!!!!! the capacitor electrolyte when it leaked over time, it deteriorates the glue that holds the copper to the actual circuit board, so in MOST cases, not all, the pads will pop off the board and rip the trace in the process during removal, and the heat of the soldering iron only accelerates the situation. I use snips to cut the capacitor at the "ring" part toward the bottom, while applying downward pressure, because the mini dikes will try to squeeze the cap and force it to pull up before it actually "cuts" it. Without downward pressure on cutting, it could cause the pads to come up with the leads. thus ruining the macs day, and your day as well..
then once it cuts away you can just snip away vertically at the rest of the cap until only the pins and the capacitors seat remain. then you can just remove each lead one of the time off of the board with the soldering iron. Since the cap has been cut away, there is hardly any resistance to get in your way to remove the leads from the board via the iron. The seat will come up with it, leaving only the pads for the new cap..
Take some flux remover, or very fine tiny bit of alcohol on a q-tip to remove the nasty excess leaked electrolyte.
So if you feel uncomfortable in the slightest, just stop. and there are great more in-depth tutorials and there are people here that offer the service to you for a nominal charge, or even free depending on who offers their services.
however, at the same time, if the power supply to the drive is noisy from bad capacitors, youll have errors trying to read/write the disk.
Life story: (i know, people hate these). I have a macintosh LCIII. the disks started giving me trouble, read one disk in another machine worked fine. read it in the LCIII gave me unreadable error. but sometimes it worked. I recapped the few capacitors that were on the LCIII system board. everything is just peachy once again
when tackling a capacitor job, BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL!!!!!! the capacitor electrolyte when it leaked over time, it deteriorates the glue that holds the copper to the actual circuit board, so in MOST cases, not all, the pads will pop off the board and rip the trace in the process during removal, and the heat of the soldering iron only accelerates the situation. I use snips to cut the capacitor at the "ring" part toward the bottom, while applying downward pressure, because the mini dikes will try to squeeze the cap and force it to pull up before it actually "cuts" it. Without downward pressure on cutting, it could cause the pads to come up with the leads. thus ruining the macs day, and your day as well..
then once it cuts away you can just snip away vertically at the rest of the cap until only the pins and the capacitors seat remain. then you can just remove each lead one of the time off of the board with the soldering iron. Since the cap has been cut away, there is hardly any resistance to get in your way to remove the leads from the board via the iron. The seat will come up with it, leaving only the pads for the new cap..
Take some flux remover, or very fine tiny bit of alcohol on a q-tip to remove the nasty excess leaked electrolyte.
So if you feel uncomfortable in the slightest, just stop. and there are great more in-depth tutorials and there are people here that offer the service to you for a nominal charge, or even free depending on who offers their services.