What to do with a dead HDD ? .. make a wind chime !!!

[Eazy]

This is a how-to on making a simple wind chime and a keychain out of hard drive components. It also tells you how to open up a Western Digital hard drive.

http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~wing/wingie/tech/hdchime/hdchime.php

[Chaos]

LOL this is amazingly funny

[SunnyBoi]

i love my Hynix 256MB DDR266 keychains

i really want to open a HDD..the platter’s reflection amazes me…

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

If only i cud make those wind-chimes outta dead floppies. i cud have started a business by now

[Renegade]

i only love the magnet. its so damn powerful.
I will sure try this windchime.

[TheMask]

looks nice.. may be i’ll try this sometime..

[Eazy]

Came across these 2 posts on another forum regarding handling of HDD platters…

You can use all the little rings and whatnot, but don’t use the actual disks! I really don’t know if this can produce enough radiation to be hazardous or not. I only know I read somewhere that cobalt exposed to sunlight can become radioactive! To what level, and how long it takes, I dunno! The guy said the disks don’t make a good sound anyways, so he didn’t use them. I have a pile of about 50 disks removed from dead hard drives in a strong box. I have them in there to shield them from stray solar radiation. I dunno if I’m being paranoid or what, but there’s no way I want a bunch of radioactive cobalt covered disks sitting in my house!! Go ahead and take the hard drives apart, and put the disks somewhere where they won’t be in direct sunlight. I’v taken apart hundreds of hard drives. I even have some of the 5 1/4" platters in the strong box! You get some big rings out of the old 5 1’4" drives! Have fun, do it to it, just don’t use the platters! If you’re really paranoid, wait until night time to take them apart

and another post in reply to this one…

More often then not, Cobalt exists with 27 protons and 32 neutrons. Cobalt 60 (27 protons, 33 neutrons) as well as Cobalt 57 are both radioactive isotopes that are used in various fields of medicine and science. Cobalt 60 actually undergoes a form of beta decay to form nickel

I checked on the half life of these isotopes is typically around a year (dependent on the specific isotope).

and also, cobalt is necessary for a balanced diet (much like iron) but too much can be harmful. Also, the likelihood of being exposed to cobalt, even if in the sun, and it causing damage due to radioactive decay is next to zero. The only real health problem would be if you consumed some of it

So the point to all this is …DONT EAT YOUR HARD DISK PLATTERS !! :food5: