Old hard drives

[clide]

I got oodles of old hard drives from my dad's work, most of them less than 2 GB, so obviously they are not useful for storing data. I was wondering if you guys had any good ideas of what to do with them.

Of course I will be using some of them as targets (and possibly projectiles), and I'll probably take the magnet out of all of them.

Any other ideas of fun ways to destroy them or creative things to do with their parts?

[spudshot]

you can melt them down and cast them if you have a small foundry, most of them are aluminum i guess

[SpudMonster]

Let afroman tell you waht to do...

http://www.afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspe ... eakers.htm

[clide]

Heh, I actually already tried the hard drive speakers, but I couldn't find an amp around that I already have, and I don't really want to spend $20+ just to get one.

Yeah, I noticed they look like aluminum, I may look into making a small foundry.

Edit: NM, I got the hard drive speaker working, I guess it was just a bad solder job the first time. Unfortunately the only amp I could find has a subwoofer built into it so It's thumping pretty loud by the time the hard drive starts making much sound.

[BillyBobJoe]

Take the magnets out of em'. They have some really powerful ones - http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/neodym.html Yours might be sorta small, but if you can't find anything else to do with them . . .

[orangekid13]

i have got to try the hard drive speakers... i could set up a huge array of them if i talked to the network admin from my high school, there should still be a pile of 2gb hdd's in the surplus room

[the moog]

You can make a cool LED clock.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umparekh/h ... clock.html

[jimmy]

You could take the disks out and maker a disk flinger to throw them.

Or, remove the read heads, make the connection from the drive motor to disk non-permanent, power up the motor and see if you can launch the disks from the drive itself?

(The afroman speakers are a crack up. Go the Greatful Dead route and use about fifty of the drives...)

[orangekid13]

I usually take the magnets out and store them on screws in my james bond style attic (my mirror is the door, the house came like that) so i don't rip my fingers open separating them or magnetize anything, and put the platters on puspins on my wall. The magnets come in really handy when running cat5 network cable through the walls, you have someone put it on the cieling where the wire needs to be dropped, and you can find it a lot easier than knocking, and you don't have to put a hole in the cieling...
I'm redoing my desk when I get home in may, and i'm going to spread them out, maybe get more. I'll definately ask my old teacher about getting some more old ones, decorate with some and save 4 or so for speakers...

[Lord of the Rings Junkie]

I third taking out the NIB magnets!8) (I just bought 5 1" dia. x 1" long rod magnets from UN...) Man these things are fun... Challenge your friends to pull them directly apart without sliding them or anything.