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
In a distant post-apocalyptic future, the survivors will use hard drive platters as a currency.
I havest them for the BlooDisk God Linuxathor, we are not the same.
Now I am feeling sorry I did not…
Techno-shamanism! I made a dream-catcher made from some plates.
Oh wow!
I heard they keep data corruption away.
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
I made a DRAM catcher once.
No but now I know what to do with my old hard drive that failed :)
I use them as coffee mats…
I do that with save icons!
The 3.5s make for excellent coasters lol
How do you keep them from sticking onto cups
Good question, but I’ve not had that issue so far
I typically use yeti ramblers with a metal bases on them, though I’ve set ceramic mugs down on them too and they’ve not stuck. might depend on the drink a little?
Oh it’s probably vacuum sealed then so it doesn’t condensate
Maybe but I do spill a bit every now and then. Can’t speak for the regular ceramic mugs, though that’s a bit of a rarity and they just have herbal tea
Yes. Got to admit mine just isn’t as big as yours, though.
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.
The magnets are fantastic for tool mounts since they’re so strong
Yes. The magnets are ridiculously strong. Several hold screen in place on my heat exchanger, to keep leaves and lawn debris at bay.
Haven’t figured out a good use for the platters, but skeet shooting has crossed my mind.
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.
Zombie apocalypse DIY railgun
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 :)
we do that around the veggie garden, but with aol cds.
I use SSDs
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
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.
That’s very cool, do you have a picture of them?
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.
