That’s rad, and you did an amazing job keeping them whole. Recently I have been wrapping them in cloth, then the kids form clay around them for various fridge and office magnets.
That’s a good idea. Yeah, the trick I discovered in getting them off the mounting bracket without the chrome plating peeling is to grab each end of the bracket with vice grips and/or pliers (after you unscrew it from the drive) and just bend it down and away from the magnet. They usually come off in one piece that way, too.
I’ve done some of that, recently I have an old putty knife and I will put it right against the crack and just hammer it which will unstick it enough that I can pull it off. Newer drives definitely have weaker magnets than some of my much older ones.
Cool, I’ll try this next time. So far the least damaging way I’ve tried is putting the thing in hot water. The magnet and the base expand by different amounts and it is relatively easy to pry the magnet off. But the thing cools down quickly so it takes a few tries.
I was doing some blacksmithing in high school, mostly knifes.
When reaching 800°C steel is not magnetic anymore, it’s also a good temperature to start forging the steel. So I needed a atrong magnet to know when the steel was hot enough, I used what I have available: a hard drive magnet.
It felt quite “mad-maxy” to disassemble a broken hard drive to use it as a tool to forge knifes
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.
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?
No, because I am worried the NSA may try to collate data from them. In fact, I zero-wipe, drill bit the drives in the platters and the PCB, and drop them off at e-waste for recycling.
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.
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