During transport of hard drives from the factory to the end customer, vibrations can induce small repetitive displacements of the ball bearings giving rise to fretting corrosion at the metal surfaces. On the other hand, it has been found that some particular types of grease additives can form thin layers on steel surfaces and thus protect against fretting corrosion. TOF-SIMS has been used to study the chemical nature of layers formed on bearing surfaces containing greases with dithiocarbamates, dithiophosphates, and metal sulfonate additives. In cases where fretting was prevented, the presence of MoS2-, FeS- and ion fragments containing Mo-Fe-S- were observed, whereas none of these ions were detected on the surfaces of fretted bearings. Finally, it is inferred that the action of metal sulfonates may have an antagonist effect on the anti-fretting activity of the dithiocarbamate and dithiophosphate compounds studied. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.