Harddrive Coaster

You just replaced your laptop harddrive and wish you could do something useful with the bad drive? Make a interesting coaster to place under your drinks and impress your geek friends.

Step 1 Get some sticky feet

Go to your local hardware store and get some self stick feet to put on the bottom of the harddrive. These will protect your nice table from scratches and keep hot or cold conduction to your table top. I got these from Dale Hardware. They are about 1/8 inch high.

Comments

[Azzlan]

Great last minute present for a computer geek 

[gernig]

Yes now i know what to do with my HDD, and my floppies, and laptop, and monitors, and dog when theyre all dead. COASTERS! ...-_-

[twocvbloke]

Got to be careful with these drives, if you plan to use the platters for some other project, cos all of the 2.5" drives I have dismantles have had glass (or something similar) platters, the first one I thought I could bend the platter up to access the head underneath, and it exploded!!! Next one was when I dropped a drive, and the platters shattered inside the case, and subsequent drives I just broke them just for the heck of it... :) All drives were dead of course... :)

[geekdude]

glass!? really? interesting. when did they start doing that?

[twocvbloke]

No idea, presumably in the 90s when laptops were developing and they wanted to reduce power consumption or something... :)

[botronics]

Glass is better! check this link.

[twocvbloke]

That image is cool, I never knew Aluminium was so rough, even when shiny!!! :D

[geekdude]

old floppy disks make better coasters because you can rip them in half and they have fabric on the inside that absorbs the moisture. probably would work better if you glued a bunch of them together

[Punkguyta]

Uhuhhh. Well ok. Say, how big is that had, I'm looking for a new one for my toshiba satellite 2520cds.

[enigma487]

about 2.5 inches. :-)

[Punkguyta]

Sigh, you're just as bad as my friend. What is it's capacity

[H3xx]

Well if you pull the platters and the read write head out with the magnets, then you could put about 2-3 ounces of sand in it and make a cool desktop rock garden. :)

[Punkguyta]

Lol nice one

[Solderguy]

You know what else makes a good coaster? Dvds/cds that were burned improperly

[Rimwulf]

they make good frisbees.

[H3xx]

Or clay (ok, plastic) pigeons to practice your aim, maybe with a homemade coil gun.

[mkanke]

Hang them from trees with string to deter birds.

[wt200999]

Hmm, I took out an old hard drive from an old IBM and after taking the hard drive apart, that side of it has a padding on it already, interesting...

[uberdum05]

You could, in theory, make a hi-speed HDD drinks stirrer. Make a magnetic coupler and stir away!

[Thunderexpress]

If it still works and has a decent size give it to me. I have a 10 gig on my old ibook

[botronics]

Oh it's surface is dead. But if you connect 5 v to the drive it's fun to watch the heads go through the startup sequence. In fact, I saw an artbot made with a bunch of hard drives starting and stopping. The Artist connected microphones to each one of 16 and had it play "music" as they ran. I have about six drives that run motors only, but are unusable. Maybe I should try it. The display is called "Raw Hard Drive Sound" at this link:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/008122.php

[Frank Strudel]

Which pins do you connect up? Thanks.

[botronics]

On a laptop HD pins 41,42 is +5 and pin 43 is common. I marked the pins on the photo. Just use 41 and 43, on the top row toward the left. Good enough to turn on. The HD is a Fujitsu MHM2200AT.

[Frank Strudel]

Thanks! As it just beeps and clicks, I guess it must be the spindle motor, but thank you for your help!

[botronics]

Thats the power up routine. The head will run across the platter as it spins up, then park itself. If its a bad drive, go ahead and take the cover off and watch it do its thing.

[fungus amungus]

Why stop there? Why not open it up to get at the platters inside?

[CameronSS]

And you can take out the neodymium magnets--You can always find uses for them...

[jordan.day]

Yes, when it comes to coasters, a platter would be radder.

[CameronSS]

I just took an old platter and superglued rubber feet to it -- ultra-geeky, shiny coaster.

[botronics]

I did take a look inside and if I replace the cover with a see thru plexiglas top, it would really look cool