As more of an artist than a techie for the most part — if you have your medium or at least part of it — the more interesting thing about art is what you have to say about it.
As an example, if you want to draw a distinction and comparison between the age of discovery and the age of technology, you could use the hard drives as a canvas on which to paint a portrait of something like Robert Scott / Lawrence Oates, or Jacques Cousteau, or Armstrong and Aldrin etc.
On that last one - if you could tie the size of the drive in comparison to the size of the code used in the moon landing that might also be interesting.
Anyway, all that to say - art is a mix of medium and message
Usually aluminium or glass. There’s a metallic coating applied to the outside surfaces that stores the data. That layer is very thin though, so most of the material is the substrate.
There’s some really fun chemistry in the rare-earth magnets - I used to buy them in bulk to enlarge my own IT-workshop collection, which was mostly broken down for Nd salts. Also, the magnets from iMac screens were also plentiful when HDD magnets got small (and then went extinct).
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