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I use the platters like this as my primary long term storage solution. It just saves so much space without the large enclosures. /s
You joke but early 90s we had exactly this with magneto optical drives
Ah yes. The famous write-only backup solution :D
Techno-shamanism! I made a dream-catcher made from some plates.
I made a wind chime once that I really loved. Had to dirty the plates because they could catch the sun well enough to vaporize your retinas
I made a DRAM catcher once.
I heard they keep data corruption away.
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This is cool, but honestly kind of a deranged question to ask.
Does anybody else harvest the teeth of their victims and put them on a keychain?
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Fair, my home office is a monument to too much free time, a hoarding habit for ewaste, and a wife who works weekends and overnights.
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Thought it was just me. Used to have at least twice this many in my old office:
That's rad, and you did an amazing job keeping them whole. Recently I have been wrapping them in cloth, then the kids form clay around them for various fridge and office magnets.
That's a good idea. Yeah, the trick I discovered in getting them off the mounting bracket without the chrome plating peeling is to grab each end of the bracket with vice grips and/or pliers (after you unscrew it from the drive) and just bend it down and away from the magnet. They usually come off in one piece that way, too.
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No but now I know what to do with my old hard drive that failed :)
That's a funny looking Stanley cup.
I don't have the space to hoard garbage.
What
No
No, because I am worried the NSA may try to collate data from them. In fact, I zero-wipe, drill bit the drives in the platters and the PCB, and drop them off at e-waste for recycling.
Yes. The magnets are ridiculously strong. Several hold screen in place on my heat exchanger, to keep leaves and lawn debris at bay.
Haven’t figured out a good use for the platters, but skeet shooting has crossed my mind.
If you wind a 2 or 3 layer pancake coil the size of the platter out of 12 or 14AWG magnet wire and dump a couple kJ through it from a capacitor bank, the platter will launch into the air. Don't try it indoors unless you want a platter embedded in the ceiling.
Zombie apocalypse DIY railgun
Nope, but now I wish i did
I used to make clocks with the platters and give them to friends and family. Michael's used to sell inexpensive clock mechanisms that looked really cool against the platter background. I haven't seen them lately, but I'm sure someone sells them online.
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Holy crap. I don’t, but after seeing that I think I’ll need to start
I have like 30 old hard drives laying around and have been thinking about doing a cool art installation with them for a while.
Maybe shatter the platters to create a spiky landscape and epoxy them in, or something like that.
Any ideas?
As more of an artist than a techie for the most part — if you have your medium or at least part of it — the more interesting thing about art is what you have to say about it.
As an example, if you want to draw a distinction and comparison between the age of discovery and the age of technology, you could use the hard drives as a canvas on which to paint a portrait of something like Robert Scott / Lawrence Oates, or Jacques Cousteau, or Armstrong and Aldrin etc.
On that last one - if you could tie the size of the drive in comparison to the size of the code used in the moon landing that might also be interesting.
Anyway, all that to say - art is a mix of medium and message
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Macabre.
Yet also (bitter-)sweet, those drives gave everything they had for you, it's only right to honor their memory & remember them.
I just open the drives & put them on shelves.
That's funny, that's exactly the method I stored my cdRoms back in the day.
I keep the magnets, but I shred the platters. 'cause magnets are cool.
I will keep the magnets if I ever get into this in the future, but not the platters. I'll just safely destroy them and dispose of them.
So far I only had 3 laptops and no desktops. I had 0 HDD failures, since I only ever had 3 of them so far.
The oldest one is more than 17 years old 80GB 2.5" Fujitsu HDD.
The magnets are fantastic for tool mounts since they’re so strong
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My daughter's drawings are held on my fridge with old HDD magnets.
Platters make good coasters
A common public toilet till machine has a keyhole that looks like a coin slot. Turns out, HDD magnets are the perfect shape to fish out any coins mistakenly thrown in there.
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... I didn't but I guess I could start?
I would take those and the adhesive rubber feet that you would get with switches and make coasters out of them to give away.
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Both of my autistic kids love magents. I will pull them from old drives, car/pc speakers, or anything else that has them.
I don't want to ruin your fun, but the last time I saw a post like this on reddit, the top comment was: "Don't open hard drives. They contain micro particles from wear and tear, that are as dangerous as asbestos."
Edit: I found the post and comment. The issue mentioned was the cobalt. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/17il3i3/comment/k6veo9c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Edit2: I went and searched a bit. This meta-analysis says they found no increased cancer risk for exposure to cobalt particles. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230021001288
I did a quick bit of research on this, and I wasn't really able to find anything to corroborate this. I'd be interested to know if there is a proper source to this though
Edit: there can be some concern for those metal particles, although this is no different for any metal dust by the looks of things https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/do-old-hard-drives-contain-toxic-materials.1623183/#post-11646780
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I have never seen any dust or particles, they are pristine looking inside and no film or anything when touching internals. But I did some checking, drives have an air filter to catch wear particles to preserve clean head to disc contact, so those micro particles are hopefully trapped in the filter, and the risk is super low because of the tiny amount available, compared to clouds of asbestos dust in a home reno.
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this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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