Recycling a Dead Hard Drive

So, an ancient hard drive in one of my Linux laptops finally conked out.

Most people bash them with a large hammer and throw them in the trash.

But I've taken them apart before. There is cool and useful stuff inside.


I always thought if I was stranded on a desert island, these would be mighty handy items! (Geez, the things I think about.)

- The two round disks are the platters. They make outstanding signal mirrors! I can paint a target a mile away. These old ones are made of metal. The newer ones are plastic but just as effective, though rather more fragile.

- The crescent shaped piece (bottom centre) is an extremely powerful magnet. It will pick up a 16 oz. full sized hammer and hold it securely. It would also act as a compass floating on a piece of wood in water.

- The remainder is a variety of precision metal parts. The platter arms (bottom left) would make great fishhooks. The rest could be shiny lures perhaps.

You seem to have lost a few bits Douglass?

Yes, and a few screws are loose as well. Or so I'm told.

The body of most harddrives is a chunk of aluminum, so if you're into casting, you can melt that and use it.  Aluminum tends to oxidize very quickly during a melt, so melting thin stuff like beverage cans has a relatively low yield of usable metal, but harddrives should be much better.  I think I have a couple dozen waiting for the day I finally get around to doing some casting.  I'd love to make a Gingery-style lathe