Every time, without fail, though I haven’t decided what I want to do with them yet.
No but now I know what to do with my old hard drive that failed :)
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.
Cool, I’ll try this next time. So far the least damaging way I’ve tried is putting the thing in hot water. The magnet and the base expand by different amounts and it is relatively easy to pry the magnet off. But the thing cools down quickly so it takes a few tries.
I’ve done some of that, recently I have an old putty knife and I will put it right against the crack and just hammer it which will unstick it enough that I can pull it off. Newer drives definitely have weaker magnets than some of my much older ones.
Wow it looks like a light sweeper
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
This is cool, but honestly kind of a deranged question to ask.
This is just a less gross version of “DAE store their piss in jars so they can commemorate their unitary secretions”?
Unhinged comment.
baffled glance…wot?
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.
Does anybody else harvest the teeth of their victims and put them on a keychain?
Or fashion bow ties from their testicles. . ?
Dude’s the Predator of the IT world
Techno-shamanism! I made a dream-catcher made from some plates.
I heard they keep data corruption away.
Oh wow!
I made a DRAM catcher once.
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
That’s a funny looking Stanley cup.
What
I would take those and the adhesive rubber feet that you would get with switches and make coasters out of them to give away.
I’ve done this for years and it works great.
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 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.
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
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.
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
Hey, I just want to say you’re a real one for actually coming back with the Reddit comment and even a source essentially debunking what you said. This is why I love Lemmy, thank you.
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.
Challenge accepted. I’ll post our collection tomorrow! I used some magnets to hold up a white board last week too. Hahaha
The mad god thrown of victory!
Nice : )
deleted by creator
Likewise
I use the platters like this as my primary long term storage solution. It just saves so much space without the large enclosures. /s
Ah yes. The famous write-only backup solution :D
You joke but early 90s we had exactly this with magneto optical drives
Curious about the age of the oldest one
I started collecting in probably 2007, so manufactured before that for sure.
