Things you can do with 20 hard drives |
By Christoffer Järnåker |
 What do you do when you realize after a garage clean-up that you have 20 old 3.5" 10Gb hard drives? This is what I found in my garage a couple of months ago and the sad thing is that they’re all working just fine. 50cm or almost 20 inches of hard drives. So what should I do with these drives? That is what I’m asking you!! This is hopefully the first article in a series of ‘Things you can make with 20 hard drives’ but I need your feedback to make it an reality. Sure I’ll manage to come up with a couple of ideas but I need more. Send in your idea to me at ideas @ grynx.com or fill in a comment and we’ll see what I can build! Note: As the project goes on all ‘creations’ will be filed in the ‘hard drive category’ |
 I have 5 Western Digital and 15 Maxtor manufactured between 2000 and 2001 and when they were new they would be sold for $175 a piece. That’s $3500 for 200Gb on these disks. Today you can buy one of these new for less then 10 bucks on eBay, but then again – who wants to buy a 10Gb hard drive today? Sell them? Forget about it! I can’t even get rid of these sad oldies even if I’d give them away… Use them as an anchor? Sorry, I don’t own a boat. Glue them to the wall as ‘modern art’ (has been done by the way)? No, I’d only get myself into a divorce. Do what any maker would to – take ’em apart and be creative? YES! That’s what I want to do!!! |
 So lets get down to it and see what pieces we have to our disposal. The first thing of course is that we need to take the hard drives apart one by one without leaving any marks on any parts so that we can use it for whatever later. It speaks for itself that we need a relatively clean working area, but it definitely doesn’t have to be dust free. It’s also a must to have the right tools or we’ll end up with scratch marks all over the place. The main tool is a torx T-9 for basically all screws in these drives. After removing the lid (6 in the edges and two under white stickers) we have this. I know it’s tempting to start sliding those heads back and forth but don’t or we might end up with a scratched disc. |
 The ‘roof’ of the ‘engine’, which is actually called the voice coil, can in this model simply be lifted of. It’s kept into place by the magnetic force of the 1st voice coil magnet located here. We need to be careful here as we’re dealing with unpredictable magnetic forces. If you don’t watch it then the ‘roof’ will jump to the side damaging the arm, disc or your fingers. And no, the last is not a joke as these magnets are very powerful. |
 To be able to remove the heads (in this drive it’s actually only one head) we need to make free way for it. If you slide the arm towards its outer position then you’ll notice that something will stop it. In this case there’s a small metal pin by the ‘engine’ and the connector for the heads is also in the way. Unscrew the two screws that hold the connector down. As this connector has a gasket under it you might need to use a screwdriver to carefully bend a bit here and there before it gives way. |
 Now when the connector is gone we can unscrew the heads. This is done by unscrewing the screw in the middle or centre point of the head mechanism. Then carefully lift out the heads. |
 This step can be a bit tricky but luckily this model has empty holes between each screw. I guess these holes are there for when they mount the disc and need to tighten it as there is no other way to prevent the disc from spinning. I can say this though – it’s worth spending half an hour on finding a tool that fits or building a mechanism to fit in the holes as a single mistake will be clearly visible on the disc later on. |
 Now it’s time to lift out the disc. As can be seen in this picture there is two rings that hold the disc down and these must be removed first. There’s a third ring below the disc that you can remove later. Lift up the disc by the edges and if you can’t get it up and need a tool then use a plastic one so that you don’t scratch it. |
 The second voice coil magnet is a lot easier to remove. Simply remove the screws that hold it into place and lift it out. Notice that there is a very small magnet on the left side. This one is there to keep the arm still when the disc is powered off. It’s very easy to remove, just use your pliers and lift it out. |
 Being careful when handling these magnets can’t be stressed enough, they’re very powerful. And getting them out doesn’t become easier as they’re glued into place. Try using a flat screwdriver and bend between these small metal knobs and the magnet to force it loose. If that doesn’t work then you have to do as in the picture below. |
 Anyone who has handled any kind of magnets before know that they easily chip or crack. It’s the same with these magnets and the shiny surface is only chrome which is what will have to give in when forcing the magnets loose. On this magnet I simply couldn’t get it loose with the screwdriver and had to use a knife. If you haven’t listened to my warnings before then it’s time that you do so now! I don’t want your mother calling me and blaming me for you cutting off your finger! You need to apply some serious force to get in between the holder and then magnet, so don’t use a Stanley knife (which I did..) as it flexes and may split under the pressure. And don’t use a hammer to force the blade through as this will usually only make sure that the magnet crack. |
 So there we have it. I’m sorry that I don’t have a complete picture of all the pieces, but I trust you have a vivid imagination. On the picture:
Not on this picture:
And multiply this with 20. This is what we have to play with. 20 discs, 20 read/write heads, 40 very powerful magnets, 60 spacer rings that sounds -ping- when you… ping them… Fill in a comment or send me an email at ideas @ grynx.com and we’ll see what I can build! |
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December 7th, 2005 at 15:53
Things you can do with 20 hard drives
Chris is looking for things to do with 20 old hard drives “I have twenty 3.5 inch hard drives collecting dust in my garage (10Gb and all working) and I will use them to do things. What things I haven’t decided yet, but I already have a couple of ide…
December 7th, 2005 at 17:06
these drives have some really nice brushless motors. I’ve always regretted not being able to control them. The dsPic from Microchip will work, I believe, so you could have some really neat little robots.
December 7th, 2005 at 18:32
I’ve always wanted to make a PC self-destruct device. This can be accomplished by tearing out the guts, filling the case with thermite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite) and igniting a magnesium fuse by remote control (i.e. cell phone). A pager or cell phone could be used as a trigger and an internal NiCad battery pack hooked to the existing 5V power plug (for trickle charging) could provide the power to set off the igniter even if the machine is unplugged. If this device is installed on top of the existing hard drives it should easily burn through them (and the case; and the desk; and the floor).
December 7th, 2005 at 19:37
Well, I saw somewhere that you could make a set of harddrive speakers. It required 3 different sizes of hard drives so you may have to scrounge for some more.. But you could set up a surround sound system with all of them..
http://home.insightbb.com/~stephenwmoore/Speakers/Hard_Drive_Speaker.htm
and a better one here,
http://www.afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspeakers/hdspeakers.htm+harddrive+speaker&hl=en
December 7th, 2005 at 19:45
I have tons of these old hard drives lying around from work. I use the magnets on my fridge and the platters make great mirrors. you could make all sorts of things from the PCBs (i’m thinking those old notebooks, keychains, and other office items made from circuit boards and ancient memory sticks). Let me know what else you come up with as i’m always looking for ideas.
Thanks.
December 7th, 2005 at 20:30
Here’s an idea : set them up as a natural lighting device for your home. Think of it as an array of mirrors set up to reflect light into your house. Mount the platters each individually on a voice coil, then mount the voice coil/platter assemblies on a frame. Use the strong magnets to make a stepper motor to turn (rotate) the frame, and set up the voice coils to adjust the attitude (up/down position) of the platters. You’ll then be able to program 20 individual mirrors to reflect light from outside in to your home. Since the whole array could probably be run off of 5vdc, it could present a tremendous energy savings by replacing incandescent lighting during the day.
December 7th, 2005 at 21:48
You could use the platters as a mirror array to power a solar device. Or use the motors to make lock-picking devices. the plans are out there somewhere…
December 7th, 2005 at 22:11
I have seen people make clocks out of them..
Make some clocks… sell on ebay…
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umparekh/hard_drive_clock.html
http://www.gtojon.com/harddriveclocks/
December 7th, 2005 at 22:11
I say make a parabola from the platters.
December 7th, 2005 at 22:54
Platters can be used to make coasters, I would suggest sand blasting an image onto the top side and putting felt pads on the bottom for an interesting coaster. The rings that separate the platters can be used as windchimes or napkin rings, pcbs can be used to make a putter or driver like you can buy on the net. You can also use the entire harddrives to make either speakers or even a clock. How to’s on the speakers are at afrotech mods but the clock might be harder to find. You can use the coiled wire in the arm to make battery heated clothes/steering wheel cover(also on afrotech). You might be able to create your own musical percussion instrument by using these platters as cymbols. I really like the projects with the platters so you could maybe solder them together into a shape and make something from it, maybe a computer case? That’s all I got.
December 8th, 2005 at 1:00
if you take the magnets and wrap them with very fine wire you can use them as magnetic pickups in a homemade guitar {be sure to keep them far enough away from the strings cause these puppies will damp out the vibrations if you get to close
December 8th, 2005 at 1:18
hi…i was thinking on my way home from work about this;
does anybody know if it is practical/ if someone has written code to get a serial port or usb to talk to an ide device? i think it has been done in external hardrives. i am pretty sure an external drive has a power supply but does it have any bits of circuitry to interface an ide device to a non-ide bus, anybody seen plans for this kind of adapter and supporting code???diy external hard drive?
December 8th, 2005 at 3:20
The platters can be attached to piezo transducers (good one for this: radioshack pt# 273-073a), and used as part of an electronic drum trigger. I’ve buit a few of these, and wih some effort, they work just as well as the expensive kind.
sites:
http://www.edrum.info
http://edrum.for.free.fr/
December 8th, 2005 at 5:53
RAID 0!!!!
December 8th, 2005 at 8:36
I had on old drive. I took the cover off of it, drilled a hole through this motor spindle and installed a clock movement.
December 8th, 2005 at 13:17
Well, not so much an idea as a part you missed…
There is a nice (stepper) motor in there that can (sometimes) be unscrewed or pressed out of the housing. Even if you don’t use it as a motor, it has interesting applications as a bearing (I’ve seen DIY arcade type spinners made out of one).
Can’t wait to see what you can make out of these things! I’ve got a bunch of old ones (some 1.2GB!) lying around as well.
-CJD
December 8th, 2005 at 13:18
Whatever it’s going to be it’s got to be magnetically suspended in mid air…
December 8th, 2005 at 15:34
How about a gauss rifle made from the magnets – should be fun…
http://www.scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/magnets/gauss.html
December 8th, 2005 at 17:42
1. Collect 20+ obsolete Hard Drives
2. Assemble kitschy uses for them
3. ???????
4. PROFIT!!!!
December 9th, 2005 at 4:06
wind generator!
http://www.otherpower.com/wardalt.html
December 9th, 2005 at 6:49
This is an idea that I was going to implement, but I have neither the time nor resources at this point, so you are happy to have it.
The idea it to make a retro lamp out of a bunch of platters, with a cold cathode light running up the middle. Hide the inverter
in the base and wire it to a headphones type jack and plug a wallwart into that for your power. I think having a lamp like this would be
nice.
December 10th, 2005 at 0:23
– I made art out of a drive by painting it with fluorescent paint, then running the drive with the cover off and dripping paint onto the rotating platter under a blacklight.
– The magnets are useful, grab the magnet with one side of the pliers and the metal base with the other, and pinch until the glue breaks loose. The magnet face will be at roughly a 90 degree angle to the plier jaws.
– Taking drives in the woods for target practice is always fun.
– The aluminum base casting is a pretty good grade for melting down. I always wanted to build a homemade propane forge, and melt some of these down for some home sandcasting.
– The spacer rings between the disks are kinda interesting. I have glued one at an angle to another > and put on a rotating surface (another disk) to look like the top ring is rolling in circles.
– Put on some safety googles and beat one flat with a sledgehammer to make interesting wall art.
– Hold the circuit board upside down and carefully heat it with a propane torch so all the components fall off.
December 10th, 2005 at 3:05
I work for a large company and our IT people saved a bunch of drives when upgrading some old sun stations. Some quantum, some IBM, some seagate, some really large and scary looking drives.
Mostly 1-2G drives SCSI drives.
Then when the upgrade was completed the drives were sitting in storage for a few years.
About a year ago someone decided it’s time to send them to reclamations.
I got two boxes of them loaded in a crate and hid them in of of the labs.
Me and my boss spent a couple of months now opening them up
We sure learned a lot about mechanical engineering and of course THE MAGNETS!
I have a box full of them. Very dangerous. We pinched ourselvs a few times.
Magnets used to attract a lot of visitors to my cube
Most people take two magnets and then try to see how strong they are . . . holding them in two hands, moving close, WHACK! magnet or both are cracked in pieces!
I can now safely handle magnets of just about any strength.
On some really large drives we had to use a vice to separate the magnet assembly.
I can also take apart any harddrive in a very short time
I’m not sure how useful these skills are, but i sure had a ton of fun with these drives!
My boss was building a backyard furnice to melt the aluminium from the drives
I still have maybe 50 or 60 drives to take apart, but no time for them right now
December 10th, 2005 at 18:48
I’ve found that the disks from hard drives conduct heat amazingly well — you can’t melt them with a torch very easily. Thus, components for a Stirling-cycle engine (displacer piston, flywheel, heat transfer plate or similar)/ heat exchanger/radiator for a solar collector etc?
December 21st, 2005 at 10:00
well… i didn’t cut OFF my finger, but I did cut it….. :-p
December 28th, 2005 at 23:32
why not send some to me? im in need of some hard drives no matter what size
mingle_dingle@hotmail.com
i live in sydney btw
January 8th, 2006 at 1:27
U can donate them to the middle school where I volunteer one day every other week. They use older computers and have drive problems (being so old). I could use them for replacements drives.
January 9th, 2006 at 2:22
A couple of ideas:
Use the platters as a means to recording finger prints (if you have small kids just have them touch one temporarily). Store the platters in a safe place in a large ziplock.
Have some fun with sun…use the platters to try and heat a glass of water on a warm (or better cool) day.
Make a Dobsonian type telescope out of the mirror like platters.
January 10th, 2006 at 20:51
i would like to build a removable usb storage system
January 16th, 2006 at 23:04
plz plz plz
give them to me
or
conect them all up and use them….
durr
January 20th, 2006 at 0:02
warbarz@gmail.com Any suggestions as to combining the working drives into an IDE array thats then patched into usb controller? sugestions or examples or resources, please email them to me or post.
January 20th, 2006 at 1:23
You could sell 2 of those hard drives to me, since I found 2 700mhz PCs on the sidewalk, minus hard drives… how about 9.95 each? PLEASE!?!??!?!?!?!
March 25th, 2006 at 16:16
dasiy chain them
the best idea is i see here tho is
doante em to needy places
March 28th, 2006 at 23:55
Donate each to a “useful” cause: Send one to Darfur, the IRS, the Red Cross, PETA, etc. I’m sure each of these places could find a use for them.
Then you could write off the donation!
April 20th, 2006 at 16:36
Is it possible to build a helicopter with the spinning motor? I’ve been browsing to see if it would be possible. I’m thinking the weight of it would make it a no go though.
May 11th, 2006 at 1:12
Give back to schools. The Science teacher will be glad to have a couple so he can show his students how drives and voice coils work.
May 13th, 2006 at 17:52
Use the platters to make a tesla turbine.
June 20th, 2006 at 0:45
URL says most of it. With 15 identical drives, you should have enough voice coil magnets for a kickass PM generator. Just be reeeeel careful when putting it together. Also if you gear up the spindle motors, assuming they aren’t built in to the frames, around a worn-smooth 10-speed wheel you can probably get between 2W to 10W out of each of them depending on the model. You need to get those up pretty fast to get decent power from them.
The maxtor 7xxx series are my favorite — the screws are all philips #0 — torx are better yes, but rarely do you find a drive that has *all* the screws the same — they come apart like butter. They also use common thread sizes, and all the parts are easier to pervert towards other purposes than any of the other drives I’ve taken apart (and I’ve taken apart most brands.)
The guy above with the SCSI drives, if they are the half height variety, may find the magnets powerful enough to levitate graphite (again, see the URL.) You might be able to do it as well if you can liberate some of the magnets and stack an extra layer and re-shim the shields to add more gap.
July 24th, 2006 at 3:19
Make Harddrive windows on the top and install some led’s and create a custom stand, so that they are on there side and sell them as ‘custom’ external hard drives.
or remove all the lids, somehow connect all the hard drives together, RAID them together, and a cheap and naasty pentium mobo and an LCD screen, and there you have it a media server.
August 7th, 2006 at 21:11
I say… Buy an old Server case and set them all up in RAID as a server… 200 gb of Network Storage, not bad. Plus the Geek Factor
August 16th, 2006 at 13:53
You find lots of fun things when you’re into dangerous experimenting…this guy used a surge generator (which he eventually beefed up with more pulse capacitors) to crush cans, “flash” EEPROMs, and of course, shoot hard disk platters. Might make an interesting electromagnetic weapon if someone can refine it well. Stay safe!
http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/surge.html
December 4th, 2006 at 16:12
Make a gyroscope. You can take platters from multiple drives, and put them in a single drive (take out the spacers for room). The increase mass will increase the strength of the gyroscope. I just can’t figure out a way to keep it spinning since it’s not plugged in to a computer.
December 6th, 2006 at 23:40
Make some wind chimes out of the platters. I did one years ago with some OLD 8″ and 5 1/4″ platters.
December 8th, 2006 at 22:26
What about an electrogavidic repulsion engine? YOu may need a conductive rail to mount it on, but there is sufficient potential energy within the magnets to lift your body off the ground.
January 15th, 2007 at 21:52
id take them off your hands…..ive been looking for a 10 GB hard drive forever and the prices are outragous i tell you……im stuck with a 4 GB drive in my compujter right now
February 13th, 2007 at 19:28
well…you could donate them, or throw them at cars, if you are into that kind of stuff,(minus the aluminum case), you could, take black cats, or other explosive items, or make a killer computer with lots of space, donate them, that is s good idea, sell them, launch them out of a catapult, throw them in a rive, plaster them to the sides to a car, someone that you hate, send them to Mexico, store stuff on them, see what happens to them if you drop them off a really tall building, collect a lot of computers, put the drives into them and sell these computers to people, and make some good money, you could let them sit in you garage for some more years, and come back to this in five years or so. have fun. but hey most of the above suggestions are good, and accomplish something, go with those. not mine.
February 28th, 2007 at 16:40
I once made a chain out of spacer rings, and attatched it to a small electric motor.
Then i put it on the floor in front of my door, and when somebody opened the door
the rings would fall off the motor and go >pling
March 8th, 2007 at 11:59
in very interested in your project hope u will share it thanks and have a nice day thanks again
May 24th, 2007 at 21:16
Take the slag idea a little further.
Sand cast them into a sword.
For Anti-Zombie training and such.
August 27th, 2007 at 13:42
This has to be teh dumbest set of ideas I’ve ever read…you destory nonfunctional hard drives but to take perfectly working drives…
September 2nd, 2007 at 13:01
you should should take the magnets out then fire the out of a slingshot at som1 who has a mettle
plate in their head…idk i sounds kinda fun…
October 9th, 2007 at 23:11
Hang the platters in pairs with thin fishing line outdoors.
Cool windchimes. And hey reflect dots of sunlight around the yard.
November 11th, 2007 at 2:59
you could make throwies wit the magnets?
November 27th, 2007 at 11:56
Take at least one of them, replace the cover with the cover from a 80 gig or larger drive. Install in a 2ghz or faster computer.
Install xp.
Then take to Best Buy and ask them to figure out why you can’t access the rest of the harddrive space.
Always have fun!!
December 1st, 2007 at 11:23
hay i have a 20 gig hard drive i think or 30 or some thing at my dads in a draw i might go steal it would u be able to convert it to a external hard drive or hook it up to make a mp3 player or some thing and i also own a external hard drive do u think i could hook that up to a car sterio with a lcd monitor i have a mini monitor i took outa a gameboy just looking how to make it into a mp4 player
December 13th, 2007 at 4:37
Donate them to a school. 10GB are more than enough to setup small desktop machines dedicated to teaching, or letting children play. They also can be used to boot dedicated firewalls such as pfsense, ipcop, etc.
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:57
turn then into knife / tool holders
see my page for directions
http://mwhisted.googlepages.com/home
February 25th, 2008 at 17:55
give them back. . .
to a school
though you may have little time on your hands,
install them in “your” local schools
’tis better to be noble. . .than to regret
February 25th, 2008 at 17:56
give them back. . .
to a school
though you may have little time on your hands,
install them in “your” local schools
’tis better to be noble. . .than to regret
February 26th, 2008 at 7:41
Take them apart use the little pieces to make jewelry, wind chimes with the discs, fishing lures etc………
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:11
Hard drives and CD-Rom drives are simply wonderful things to have build another cool things
Here my MySpace, http://www.myspace.com/VJChico
Look the first video from top to bottom, it is a midi jog I have made myself to do video scratch using Resolume
or a direct link to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOa6ssWLoOs
Excuse me but, jewelry and wind chimes with a hard drive is wasted resource.
June 26th, 2008 at 16:27
iv been lookin for extra drives, does anyone want to give a couple away, very appreciated
October 18th, 2008 at 8:43
I know it’s very simple – but I’d be quite tempted to make one (or more) into functional art. In as clean an environment as you can get, remove the lid having FIRST cut to size a suitable sided polycarbonate replacement cover, replace metal lid with a perfectly clear one – then use a USB > IDE adaptor with a nice long cable and plug it into PC – even if just used as a “temp directory” for nothing too important. Mount the drive on the wall so when accessed you can actually see the machine working. At the risk of getting dust in there, while lid is off you *could* mount an LED or two in there if you really must – even a colour changing one.
Would also make an extremely welcome gift to any teaching establishment. Plug into a USB port and tutor can easily demonstrate how the heads scan, platter speed and so on. With some drive toolkits, you can actually make the heads move when you want them – so could demonstrate whey fragmentation is a problem, how fast voice coils can move things etc etc.
I reckon that would not only keep the drive as functional (10 GB might be small by modern standards but it *IS* still big enough to record (with compression) the name, age and address of everyone who has ever lived on the planet) – but also a rather attractive items of art AND has a third function as an education device.
Mark
December 7th, 2008 at 10:03
just take the old harddisc,throw it on the floor and say goodbye to it for ever.that’s all you can do with an old harddisc.
January 4th, 2009 at 16:14
Hi!
You can make use of the tiny magnet and build a “curie pendulum”.
Have a look at this site to make things clear:
http://www.electronicsinfoline.com/Projects/Science/Physics/Electricity_and_Magnetism/building_a_magnetic_heat_engine.shtml
Another silly idea is to glue some abrasive paper to the platter and use it for sharpening things like knifes or scissors..
Have fun!
Martin
March 17th, 2009 at 23:19
I have a bunch of these around. Seems there are such good materials in drives that there has to be a killer make that somebody is going to come up with. I think the materials are crying for something like a rotary stirling engine design. Or maybe add a skirt and make a hovercraft with the motor.
August 29th, 2009 at 5:02
The platters fit perfectly at the top of a certain size maglite flashlight. the screw on lens cover torques down to hold them rigidly in place. I attached this to the pump motor from a home spa tub bubbler and ended up with a very cool circular surgical type cutter (grind platter edge to knife sharp edge), saw (notch a platter with snips all the way around)grinding cutter(with a thicker disk platter), dont forget to add a skill saw type blade gaurd (I used the hanle part of a weird circular pizza cutter)– Was able to saw through garden shovel hanle, cut trough stubbon plastics, w/o breaking any blades never tried any surgical or meat cutting though
January 15th, 2010 at 10:18
You could make a time machine, go back to the early 90s, and sell them for thousands of dollars a piece.
Then take your new found fortune and solve all the world’s hunger problems, Or you could just smash them with a hammer.