What to make from a hard drive. Five reasons not to throw away your old hard drive. What to do with an old hard drive
If you have an unnecessary, old, or perhaps non-working one lying around at home HDD and, in addition, you like to do interesting nonsense, then you are at the right place. Today we will look at one more application, besides the main one. hard drive. There is nothing sensible or useful in this, but I hope you will find it interesting.
What do we do with an old hard drive?
The hard drive rotates at breakneck speed during operation. The process of how a hard drive works can be found in the article What do you think will happen if the drive is spun up to breakneck speed and let go for a walk around the world? This is exactly what ours will do old hard disk. The following describes the process that precedes this fun.
Preparing an old hard drive
To prepare an old hard drive for this event, you need to remove its cover and remove the hard drive head, which is used to read information. If everything is done correctly, the hard drive should look like this:
As you can see, removing the magnetic disk itself is no longer a problem. This is exactly the result we need to achieve: the magnetic disk should freely come off its burrow, but this does not need to be done yet. When the time comes, he will get down from there himself.
What do we do next?
After that, we need to connect power to our old hard drive. This should be done from the computer's power supply. If we connect power to the hard drive and supply electricity to the power supply, our drive will start spinning. This is what we are trying to achieve. Now slowly lower the hard drive to the floor and begin to gently tilt it so that the open side is closer to the floor. Somewhere in a perpendicular position (plus or minus a few degrees), the disk will be able to fly off its hole. You can help him with this. Here, make sure that the direction of rotation of the disk does not coincide with your location. As soon as the disc comes off, it will speed out of sight across the floor.
The principle is probably clear. It's like toy cars, the wheels of which need to be charged in reverse motion, after which they will go quite far. It’s the same here: we charge our disk with kinetic energy and lower it to the floor. But unlike a toy car, you need to be a little careful. Since some hard drives can spin up to 15,000 rpm, you have something like a cutting wheel in front of you. Therefore, there is no need to place fragile objects or close friends in the path of the old hard drive.
But you shouldn’t worry too much about safety. The untwisted disk runs perfectly straight, so you can choose its trajectory yourself and not be afraid that it will turn in the wrong direction. We did not observe any destructive actions in relation to the floor and wall (the only thing in my case that was not afraid of coming face to face with the disk).
This is how you can make a new toy out of an old hard drive.
Have you purchased a new, fast solid state drive (SSD) and your old one is sitting around? Give it a new task and use it as an external data storage device. To do this, you only need a case with a SATA controller; it is available for both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch models. The latter require a power supply, while compact drives have enough power supply via a USB port.
Labor intensity: average, costs: 600 rubles.
Mini NAS on the router
In all home network do you need access to the same data? To do this, you don't need expensive and bulky network attached storage (NAS) - a USB drive can do this task if it's connected to your router. Newer devices are equipped with a corresponding port.
First you need to format the USB drive from Windows OS in file system NTFS and then just connect it to the router. Moreover, the latter must have a USB port and support the corresponding functionality. Now, typing 192.168.1.1 (or similar) into your browser's address bar will take you to the router's user interface.
Go to the USB Settings | Sharing a storage device" (for TP-Link routers; for other devices the names of menu items may differ) and make sure that the disk starts.
To access data on your home network, you will only need to type an address like “\\192.168.1.1\Volume1” in Windows Explorer. A permanent connection is achieved by right-clicking on the folder to which you plan to allow access and selecting “Map network drive.”
Labor intensity: low, costs: no
Flash drive instead of password
A small USB flash drive also has practical applications. For example, when you log into Windows, you can unlock your computer without entering a password. To do this, you will need the Rohos Logon Key tool (1450 rubles), Predator (650 rubles) or the free USBLogon (http://www.rohos.ru/products/rohos-logon-free/).
After installation, you need to select the connected USB drive and configure security settings. After entering Windows password The flash drive is ready for use. Unfortunately, working with USBLogon is complicated by the German-language interface, but even without knowledge of German it is easy to understand.
Labor intensity: average, costs: no
Flash drive for emergencies
When your computer no longer works the way it should, a bootable USB flash drive comes to the rescue. The Sardu tool (http://www.sarducd.it/) installs up to 20 different antivirus programs on the drive, and also provides various versions of Linux and other “first aid” software.
> Preparation: in the left sidebar the selected software is listed by category. Check the boxes next to the required programs. We recommend choosing several antiviruses and Linux version(eg Ubuntu).
> Creating a flash drive: On the right sidebar, click on the USB drive symbol. You can start creating a bootable USB flash drive.
> Emergency use: To use a bootable flash drive in the event of an “accident”, you need to change the boot sequence from drives in BIOS Setup.
In this case, you should set the boot priority from USB to HDD. Then select the required program from the list. Don't forget to undo changes to the BIOS after "repairing" your computer.
Photo: manufacturing companies, racum/Flickr.com
Don’t rush to throw away hard drives left over after upgrading your computer or hard drives that have failed - you can always find a new use for them. For example, make a mirror, a clock, a safe for storing cash, a network drive and other useful things.
The purposes for which old hard drives can be used depend on whether they are in working order or not. It is curious that a functioning hard drive has many fewer uses than a non-functioning one.
Portable storage
If the hard drive is in working condition, it can be turned into a portable drive. To do this, just buy an external hard drive container and place the hard drive in it. Depending on the size of the drive, a power adapter may be required, for example if the drive is 3.5" while 2.5" drives usually do not require an adapter.
Home cloud server
If you already have an external drive and don't need another, you can use a working hard drive to create your own network-attached drive so you can access the data on the drive from any device connected to your Wi-Fi networks. If you are not ready to spend extra money, you can build your own network storage device based on a Raspberry Pi single-board computer.
How to use non-working hard drives
A faulty hard drive cannot be used for data storage, but its physical components may have other uses. Before starting work, you will need to disassemble it into “spare parts”. The process is demonstrated in the video below.
Magnetic knife bar
Hard disks contain large neodymium magnets that can be used to create a magnetic knife holder. All you need is a strip, magnets, glue and a set of common tools.
Mirror
Optical disks located in the hard drive can serve as an excellent mirror. The discs must be removed very carefully to avoid chips and scratches. They can then be placed in the office, used as a signal or pocket mirror.
Wind chimes
From optical disks you can create not only mirrors, but also other cute little things, such as wind chimes. To make them, you will need the optical disks themselves, a hard drive case, a metal mounting ring and a cord with which the structural elements will be connected.
Secret safe
Creative uses can be found not only for the components of the hard drive, but also for its case, for example, using it as a safe for storing money. It's quite easy to make - just remove all the components from the case and screw the cover to one of the upper corners of the case using a bolt. As a result, you will have a rotating container where you can put money.
