Does anyone else harvest the magnets and platters from old drives as a monument to selfhosting history?

I use the platters like this as my primary long term storage solution. It just saves so much space without the large enclosures. /s

Techno-shamanism! I made a dream-catcher made from some plates.

This is cool, but honestly kind of a deranged question to ask.

Thought it was just me. Used to have at least twice this many in my old office:

No but now I know what to do with my old hard drive that failed :)

That's a funny looking Stanley cup.

Dude's the Predator of the IT world

I don't have the space to hoard garbage.

What

No

I use them as coffee mats...

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.

Yes. The magnets are ridiculously strong. Several hold screen in place on my heat exchanger, to keep leaves and lawn debris at bay.

Haven’t figured out a good use for the platters, but skeet shooting has crossed my mind.

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.

Nope, but now I wish i did

And here I thought I had a lot of hdd platter coaster's.

Holy crap. I don’t, but after seeing that I think I’ll need to start

I thought you made a custom thermos bottle at first

Macabre.

Yet also (bitter-)sweet, those drives gave everything they had for you, it's only right to honor their memory & remember them.

I just open the drives & put them on shelves.

I have like 30 old hard drives laying around and have been thinking about doing a cool art installation with them for a while.

Maybe shatter the platters to create a spiky landscape and epoxy them in, or something like that.

Any ideas?

I will keep the magnets if I ever get into this in the future, but not the platters. I'll just safely destroy them and dispose of them.

So far I only had 3 laptops and no desktops. I had 0 HDD failures, since I only ever had 3 of them so far.
The oldest one is more than 17 years old 80GB 2.5" Fujitsu HDD.

Magnets, yes. Great for the fridge!

I keep the magnets, but I shred the platters. 'cause magnets are cool.

That's funny, that's exactly the method I stored my cdRoms back in the day.

My daughter's drawings are held on my fridge with old HDD magnets.

... I didn't but I guess I could start?

I would take those and the adhesive rubber feet that you would get with switches and make coasters out of them to give away.

A common public toilet till machine has a keyhole that looks like a coin slot. Turns out, HDD magnets are the perfect shape to fish out any coins mistakenly thrown in there.

Both of my autistic kids love magents. I will pull them from old drives, car/pc speakers, or anything else that has them.

Platters make good coasters

I do that to my dead drives, but I’ve only had one fail that wasn’t an SSD. Moreso because the washers that separate the platters have a very satisfying ring to them that makes me keep them as a fidget toy.

I use the magnets to hold screws, it works great for that.

Unfortunately, SSDs have less interesting parts, so I just take them apart to destroy the chips after failure

Every time, without fail, though I haven't decided what I want to do with them yet.

I don't want to ruin your fun, but the last time I saw a post like this on reddit, the top comment was: "Don't open hard drives. They contain micro particles from wear and tear, that are as dangerous as asbestos."

Edit: I found the post and comment. The issue mentioned was the cobalt. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/17il3i3/comment/k6veo9c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Edit2: I went and searched a bit. This meta-analysis says they found no increased cancer risk for exposure to cobalt particles. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230021001288

The older IDE drives with the 5.25" platters and smaller ones make great wind chimes. The laptop ones are a bit .ore fragile due to thinner material. Years ago, we used to do this with a few of them.

There's some really fun chemistry in the rare-earth magnets - I used to buy them in bulk to enlarge my own IT-workshop collection, which was mostly broken down for Nd salts. Also, the magnets from iMac screens were also plentiful when HDD magnets got small (and then went extinct).

Nice : )

Yes. Got to admit mine just isn't as big as yours, though.

I'm much more interested in your kit in the background.

Challenge accepted. I'll post our collection tomorrow! I used some magnets to hold up a white board last week too. Hahaha

I've been lucky enough to not have a drive die on me yet.

Now I am feeling sorry I did not...

I use the old disks as costers

I wish I got that many hard drives just so I could do this.

I use SSDs

This man self-hosts

What are they made of anyways?? Could one see any etching marks with a microscope?

I havest them for the BlooDisk God Linuxathor, we are not the same.

Considering they're covered in toxic shit, nope.

Back in the day I bought a fridge freezer combo, second hand, no handles. Used to be a built in model. As handles I used two magnets from full height drives, they were ludicrously strong and shaped like a little bit like a handle.

Full height drives were 3.25" high for those who are wondering.

No but I wish I had been. 😑

I used to. Magnets on old hard drives were better. Any drive I've taken apart over the last ten years or so are smaller and more brittle. Not as worth taking apart.