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.
I was doing some blacksmithing in high school, mostly knifes.
When reaching 800°C steel is not magnetic anymore, it's also a good temperature to start forging the steel. So I needed a atrong magnet to know when the steel was hot enough, I used what I have available: a hard drive magnet.
It felt quite "mad-maxy" to disassemble a broken hard drive to use it as a tool to forge knifes
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Back in the day, I'd go through HDDs faster than systems-always needed to add storage before I could replace the CPU. I didn't start disassembling them until they got up to the 500 _M_B range, but you'd often get 3 platters back then. OP must be harvesting from a whole workgroup - I've only got a 3cm stack and 7 drives waiting for the screwdriver.
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.
Here is a datasheet of one / photo. I don't have the video of me fishing coins, I probably deleted it because it was unwatchable (it's hard to fish coins while filming covertly!) but about 5 coins fit into the space behind the keyhole before they start being visible. The front panel is non-magnetic, unlike CZK coins, and the sound of fishing them out is very similar to throwing them in, so there is little suspicion unless you are at the wrong-gender toilet. Unfortunately, 10 CZK coins take effort to jam into the slot, so almost only coins up to 5 CZK ($0.25) get accidentally thrown in. Still, pays for my bus home.
I do that to my dead drives, but I’ve only had one fail that wasn’t an SSD. Moreso because the washers that separate the platters have a very satisfying ring to them that makes me keep them as a fidget toy.
I use the magnets to hold screws, it works great for that.
Unfortunately, SSDs have less interesting parts, so I just take them apart to destroy the chips after failure
The older IDE drives with the 5.25" platters and smaller ones make great wind chimes. The laptop ones are a bit .ore fragile due to thinner material. Years ago, we used to do this with a few of them.
I use old platters to hang around our chicken houses. The idea is to distract hawks and eagles with the sparkle as they spin in the breeze... Probably doesn't work, but I like the shiny disks :)
There's some really fun chemistry in the rare-earth magnets - I used to buy them in bulk to enlarge my own IT-workshop collection, which was mostly broken down for Nd salts. Also, the magnets from iMac screens were also plentiful when HDD magnets got small (and then went extinct).
That is a self-made soldering kit box I made when I was in college and had to haul it around a lot. I have actually been meeting to replace it with something more permanent now that I'm a grown up with my own house. I have an air flow soldering rig which doesn't really have a home, and I could have a much better use of space. I have my brocade ICX6610-24 next to that which I've been programming for way too long, and a whole bunch of 3D printer parts on top of that.
That kit box would actually be perfect for my needs as this is a hobby I only visit occasionally or when needed. It would be great to have something I can easily store.
Back in the day I bought a fridge freezer combo, second hand, no handles. Used to be a built in model. As handles I used two magnets from full height drives, they were ludicrously strong and shaped like a little bit like a handle.
Full height drives were 3.25" high for those who are wondering.
I used to. Magnets on old hard drives were better. Any drive I've taken apart over the last ten years or so are smaller and more brittle. Not as worth taking apart.
Usually aluminium or glass. There's a metallic coating applied to the outside surfaces that stores the data. That layer is very thin though, so most of the material is the substrate.
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."
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
The posting essentially says there is no risk than tosses out mercury and lead vapors which don't exist in a HDD. Then it talks about the lead in solder. You'd have to vigorously rub and handle the solder on circuit boards to get any amount on your skin worth worrying about and then you just wash your hands. That risk is true of all boards that don't use low or lead free solder. The whole comment is very hypothetical.
Unfortunately, I don't have a proper source. When I saw this post, the warning from reddit came to my mind and from the answers here I was surprised how many people open drives.
I assume, it is per hard drive such a negligible amount, that it could theoretically matter over a long time if you open a lot but that there is probably not a single medical proven case and the warning from reddit was overly cautious.
If your hard drive has dust it would've failed a long time ago. They are designed to be extremely clean. The head is like a 747 flying an inch above the ground. It sounds like an urban myth to scare people.
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.
They contain lead, as well as other harmful toxins. I did a bit of research and it seems unless you physically destroy the platters it shouldn't be an issue.
Still, I'd rather just not do something so useless and risk my health in the process.