Question

I have over 100++ old hard drives, ranging from 100MB Quantums to 200GB WDs, most of them PATA, some SATA. Most still working.

The squirrel mentality runs in my family - hoard everything, discard nothing. Thus, and this is a relevant question - any suggestions on how to put these drives to use (anything) instead of them just being deadweights and space takers around the office?

Hopeful objectives and suggestions to keep in mind when you post an answer :

1. Should showcase your geekiness, or plain fun, or serve a social purpose, or benefit the community.
2. You do not need to limit your answer to only one hard drive - if your project needs all 100++, bring it on!
3. Your answer need not be limited to one project per hard drive - if one hard drive can be used for multiple projects, bring it on!
4. If additional accessories need be purchased, make sure they are common. Don't tell me to get a moon rock or something.
5. The projects you suggested should serve a utility, and not just for decoration purposes.

Thanks in advance, folks.

EDIT : Well so far, the most interesting ones have been about wanton destruction of metal, and while it does give me a certain sick pleasure thinking of it, it seems to be a waste of resources. Are humans really that destructive in nature?

I have set a bounty of 500 rep points for this to contribute back to the SU community, and in the hope that someone can really come up with an original idea. Bounty will be given to the answer with the highest votes, and not what I think. Cheers, enjoy the prize - bounty will close ONE day before the end (will personally come and accept the answer).

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Dear all, unfortunately I have decided to take advantage of the lovely weather recently and head to the beach. As such I would be unable to come back in 3 days to award the bounty. Hence, I have chose the most-voted answer early, and that is the winning entry.

To hanleyp : Congratulations, sometimes the simplest idea and answer can be the most popular. You have earned it, now go edit some posts with your newfound power. :)

Answer 1

Hard drives have absolutely great magnets inside. Anything a regular refrigerator magnet can do, a hard drive magnet can do better.

Answer 2

There's always making a clock. :)

Source

Answer 3

In my area, we have a computer recycling place called Free Geek that does a lot of good for the community in terms of making hardware and computers available cheap to people who need them but can't afford new stuff. For the good drives, I'd suggest donating to something like this. Save the dead drives for yourself though. Taking a hammer to them is a great way to let off some steam after a bad day at work, and you don't have to worry about people reading them when you throw them away.

Answer 4

To do anything (cool), the first thing you need is a torx screwdriver.

I remember seeing on the internet that someone made a Christmas tree... You could always try that (I don't have the patience!). This was done from 70 drives, so you could do it and have some left over!

One thing I have done in the past is open it up and basically just hang them on the wall, with the top cover off, hard drives look nice!

The other thing is to remove the motor in the middle and make a clock out of the middle, it looks like a very nice, thick and heavy cd rom!

Answer 5

Go and help out the people with dead hard drives here : http://www.deadharddrive.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=1

They're generally looking for a specific model to try and do a logic board swap. And they're mighty grateful when they can get back the wedding photos they never backed up!

Bask in the glow of having helped out your fellow man!

Answer 6

If you are a hardware hacker, you can cut a slot in the disc, put a light behind it, and make an electronic clock:

One example on youtube -- there are others.

Answer 7

I recently landed up at a blog post of someone who is interested in guns, flying and computers.
He has a collection of blog posts showing hard-disks shot with different caliber guns.

The idea (while this is not from the same place).

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Ok, found the post -- Neural Misfires Data Integrity. Have fun.

From the post,

1. Shooting is fun.
2. Hard drives die.
3. Shooting dead hard drives is fun.
4. Dead hard drives with bullet holes tell no tales.

Label intact, but I'd say that the warranty is probably voided anyway.

Answer 8

Start out with hard drive dominos - then, and only then, do something else :)

Answer 9

Here's a project to remove iron from iron fortified breakfast cereal using hard drive magnets: How to Extract Iron From Your Breakfast Cereal

Answer 10

Personally I would scrub them with DBAN and hand them off to the local Goodwill or public school system. That many drives seems impractical for a sufficient RAID array due to power consumption, plus there's the problem of reliability due to their ages.

Answer 11

Put an ad in Kijiji. I’m sure that there are poor people in your city who would be happy to get some of the ones that work so that they can upgrade their 50MB drives. I’m sure that you will even find people (eg amateur electrical engineers, computer scientists, etc.) who would like to get a broken one or two to experiment and learn with.

You may even be able to make some money (you’ll get a lot of response if you offer them for cheap or free). Although anyone who has >100 unneeded drives probably doesn’t need a few bucks here and there.

Whatever you have left, you can just bring the working ones to the local good-will store (ie Amway, Salvation Army, Goodwill, United Way, etc.)

Whatever you have left at this point could be used for some of the experiments others have listed here.

I just noticed your addendum. I too dislike the destructive nature of people. I used to like MythBusters, but the show has devolved into nothing more than finding ways to blow crap up. Woo, hoo amusing… :roll: It really pisses me off when people smash up stuff that they don’t have a use for, especially if it still works. I once saw a video on YouTube of some pricks smashing a working GameCube simply because they had just bought a Wii. I wonder if they even considered giving it to some poor kid who has never even had a video game.

Answer 12

Why not make a JBOD? Here's what it says on Wikipedia:

Concatenation is sometimes used to turn several odd-sized drives into one larger useful drive, which cannot be done with RAID 0. For example, JBOD ("just a bunch of disks") could combine 3 GB, 15 GB, 5.5 GB, and 12 GB drives into a logical drive at 35.5 GB, which is often more useful than the individual drives separately.

I'm not sure how easy it is to do, but you might end up with a huge mega-hard drive.

Answer 13

For any that are larger than 100 GB, I can take them off your hands and make use of them. The others I would personally donate. If any have had massive wear and tear where you really don't want to let someone else use them, even temporarily, then, I would use one of the amusing destruction methods above. Or you could disassemble them one-by-one and set them aside to recycle.

Answer 14

You could always turn them into some crappy, but incredibly nerdish speakers.

Answer 15

Go ultra geek. With this and your wifi detecting shirt, you should be ready to go. Get the wifi detecting shirt at: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/interactive/991e/

Make a PC case out of the hard drives

Smash it to smithereens with a hammer. Take out your violence on the hard drives. This is really fun. I know this from personal experience.

Here is a list from tomshardware.com

1) Maglev (take off heads, use one of the actuator magnets)

2) Hard drive speakers (see Afrotech's site for this one)

3) Novelty paperweight (take off lid, fill with casting resin)

4) Novelty keyring (old Microdrives work well for this)

5) Exhibit in computer museum

6) Drive failure mode analysis

7) Send back to manufacturer and get new drive under warranty

8) Strip down for useful connectors and SMD tantalums

9) Bulk sell the PCB's on Ebay for data recovery purposes

10) Sell them on Ebay for £0.99 each as "Faulty" :)

11) Fix them with Spinrite 6.0 and sell as refurbished drives

12) Stress relief (spin up to insane RPM and hit with hammer)

13) Novelty doorbell (put button in centre of platter)

14) Doorstop

15) Pack with Thermite and light it to see how much is left of drive

16) Maglev train (same principle as *1 but a row of them)

17) Miniature centrifuge (take off platters, add tube carrier unit)

18) Time capsule (write data, seal in durable case then bury in concrete)

19) Laser scanner (glue mirrors to the spindle motor/actuator arm)

20) Tesla Turbine (nice flat platters- might work!)

21) Spin-coating machines

22) Gyroscopes for small satellites

23) Ultra-high RPM sanding machines

24) CD Destroyer (fix CD clamp to spindle motor and pin to head arm)

25) Strip spindle motors out, and use for small R/C helicopters

26) High efficiency motors for solar water pumps

27) Attach propellors and use as wind turbines

Answer 16

This looks like fun.

The video shows a large industrial shredder consuming various office objects.

Answer 17

I love rippin into old Hard Drives!!!

I like what gmgfarrand did over on Instructables. He put a USB Hub and some Flash drives inside a HD Shell. Geekishly decorative yet still practical.

P.S. Don't forget to Boot And Nuke any drives before recycling them for what ever you might deside.

Answer 18

The platters inside hard drives make great coasters. Plenty of geek cred too :)

Answer 19

The metal disks make great pocket mirrors, my gf loves them!

Answer 20

Aside from taking them apart, blowing them up, selling them or such, what i tended to do with my old/good hard drives (for some reason they outlast the computers they are in) is to use them to build a fileserver or backup. Get an old box, toss on a suitable distro, load up every port you can with drives, and shove it in a closet. I wouldn't put anything critical in them, obviously - i run a fully backed up web/irc server on mine, and use it as a halfway house for files i download since unlike my desktop, the little fileserver no one notices always runs.

Its also good for when you have a test system- you can load up an OS per drive and switch as needed between OSes

Answer 21

Donate them or sell them on ebay and do something constructive with the cash you get. Like spending all the money you buy on new 1TB Green drives and set up a new storage array. I would be curious how many drives you could buy with your ebay loot.

Destroying working hardware is stupid especially with all the waste we produce already.

Answer 22

Rig one up in your car and replace your CDs. Most recent car radios have audio input jacks, but you might have to get creative if yours doesn't (Those radio-transmitter dohickeys are legal over here, are they where you live?)

Of course, them being knocked about would be a worry, so you'd have to secure them properly, for example I've seen HDDs suspended on elastic inside a case before - perhaps a similar method could be used?

Answer 23

I like to use the platters as coasters, they're elegant, a little geeky, and the metal disperses the heat :)

Answer 24

Donate them to the Cristina Foundation. They'll help you find a charity that would very much appreciate your old hardware.

Answer 25

One word: Thermite.

Answer 26

Just in case you want to still use them as hard drives, you can take a look at a BackBlaze blog entry about how they build a cheap Linux storage box.

Answer 27

Get a DroboPro, put the 8 biggest harddisks in it and use this as an external storage device.

Answer 28

Build a ramp and send the platters flying.

Answer 29

Whilst destructing them might be fun, and simply tossing them into the trash is easy, I believe the most conciencious thing to do is to send it to a place that can recycle the silly things.

A lot of the bits can be broken down and reused like the metal casing etc. There are places, in Australia at any rate, that will take your old hardware and recycle the bits out of it.

I don't think adding them to the landfill problem is the right thing to do.

Answer 30

How big are the hard drives? You could create a big RAID array.