How to Build a Hard Drive Wind Chime For Spring

tyrani writes "Spring is just around the corner and the front of the house isn't going to decorate itself. Build a Hard Drive Wind Chime and show your neighbors what a cool geek you really are." He's honest, too. From the article: "Many people linking this page on their blogs claim that this is a secure way of destroying your hard drive and its sensitive data. It is not completely true! The platters are never used in this HOWTO and could potentially be stolen by ninjas while you're making a wind chime and the data recovered by ninja-hackers."

Rarr

[Tobias.Davis]

I built a shank out of my hard drive, with the head sensor assembly. It's hard to smuggle into jail.

Re:Rarr

[flacco]

the goatse guy should be able to help you with that.

Prag!

[NanoGator]

"I built a shank out of my hard drive, with the head sensor assembly. It's hard to smuggle into jail."

Heh I would have laughed harder at this if your nickname was Beecher instead of Davis.

No

[Quasar1999]

This story is mis-titled... it should be how to keep your g/f occuppied... by letting her make windchimes... all the while, you go out and buy new hardware for yourself... ;)

Re:No

[rob_squared]

There's a joke in here somewhere; "girlfriend", "hard-drive", "wind blowing."

Nope, got me, I can't think of anything.

Re:No

[roman_mir]

I think in my case it would be the exact opposite, she is the one to bother with all the latest tech-toys.

Man, I think I need some more RAM, I have to load /. in 256 byte chunks and it is a pain.

Re:No

[MiKM]

Slashdotters have girlfriends!?

Re:No

[hammurderer]

Well there is one good advantage to taking apart the hdd if you have never done it. the magnets are quite strong strong enough to remove the security on most items at best buy and circuit city. Its does take a bit of practice but once you get it you will be able to remove the security pretty quickly. I recommend using both of the magnets on top of eachother tends to work better. WARNING this will only work on physical security I.E. Boxes and Spider wraps. the magnets will not work on soft tags or stic

Allow me to be the first...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to say that this is probably the lamest "hack" ever.

It doesn't have anything to do with harddrives, might as well have been an engine, mix master, or VCR. All he did was to string up a couple of shiny parts.

Mac Artists

[Anonymous Coward]

if you owned a mac, this might be a viable art endeavor.... artists they are.

Re:Allow me to be the first...

[utlemming]

Very true.

However, it is something that I have seen before. My dad has two hard drive wind chimes in his backyard -- both made of between five and seven platters. It is actually a pretty funny sounding wind chime. You get clanks and good ringing from time to time.

Re:Allow me to be the first...

[FireFury03]

Don't the platters rust?

Re:Allow me to be the first...

[TFGeditor]

Not if modern platters are anything like the big 14-inch jobs we used to dissect. Made of aluminum with a metal oxide coating.

Besides, neither the platters nor the drives themselves were sealed systems, and ambient specs allowed use in fairly high humidity. Ergo, if they would rust handing in a backyard, they would rust sitting on a shelf or in a powered-down drive.

Imagine explaing that to the boss: "Well, you see, it rained yesterday so we had this head crash and....

Re:"insightful" WTF?

[drinkypoo]

Aluminum doesn't rust, because rust is iron oxide. However, it does oxidize. Most people who say "rust" don't know the difference. Aluminum typically turns more or less white when it oxidizes, and unlike FeO2, aluminum oxide actually protects the underlying aluminum. It is this tendency that makes aluminum attractive for machined parts (besides being easy to machine, strong, and light in weight) and undesirable for wiring.

Re:Allow me to be the first...

[krbvroc1]

All he did was to string up a couple of shiny parts.

If you RTFA you'll see that he didn't even use the shiny parts! Basically its 3 rings that look like washers. Definitely one of the lamest 'Stuff that matters.' post I've seen.

Wind chimes are the tool of the devil

[Neil Blender]

Not really, but they should be banned. No one wants to hear your windchime at 2am, least of all me. I have actually gone to a few nearby windchimes in the middle of the night and tied them together with fishing line to shut them the hell up.

Re:Wind chimes are the tool of the devil

[tardigrades]

They're annoying during the day time too. Honestly i'd rather listen a radio then chimes and i really hate the radio.

Re:Wind chimes are the tool of the devil

[B3ryllium]

Uh, are you a ninja?

Re:Wind chimes are the tool of the devil

[ZeroConcept]

I will tell you the real...ughhhh!! *dies from a poiton dart*

Re:Wind chimes are the tool of the devil

[MemoryAid]

My wife put up some windchimes, made of metal with a wooden striker. I found they sounded much better with a rubber band wrapped around each tube. It would cause a more rapid decay in volume. That wasn't quite good enough, though, so I found a sheltered area that doesn't get much wind to hang it in.

We also have one that is made of bamboo. It sounds better, probably because it is quieter.

You can also try stuffing the tubes with some damping material, like packing peanuts or expanding foam. Use this if you

Re:Wind chimes are the tool of the devil

[krbvroc1]

No one wants to hear your windchime at 2am, least of all me.

Not only that, but this article should have been filed under YRO.

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

would doing this void the warranty of my HD?

I'm a bad person.

[Capt'n Hector]

My neighbor had a wind chime. It got to the point where I couldn't stand it anymore, so I waited until they were gone, stole it, and threw it in the garbage. Wind chimes are loud, annoying, repetitive, and no, I'm not a grumpy old man.

Re:I'm a bad person.

[Tablizer]

Wind chimes are loud, annoying, repetitive

I just drownd it all out with Britney Spears music. Makes it sound like Mozart in comparison.

Re:I'm a bad person.

[winterlens]

Did you ask them to pull it down, by any chance? Neighbors occasionally accommodate.

Re:I'm a bad person.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not. Because if they say no and I throw it in the garbage they are going to know I did it :)

Re:I'm a bad person.

[Trogre]

An all-too-common quality of grumpy old men is that they don't realise they're grumpy old men.

Already

[Tablizer]

Oh yeah? Mine started making those noises already while *still* in the PC!......oh shit

Didn't have to be a hard drive..

[prakslash]

The so-called hack does not really use anything that is unique to a hard drive. He just cannibalized one to get some metal rings and some shiny metal thingies to hang them from.

Could have used a VCR, a CD player or even a bike!

A little lame.

wind chimes are the devil

[PortWineBoy]

I hate them.

I've found that cutting the string that supports the ball or disk in the center is the best method for dealing with them. The neighbor generally doesn't notice anything different for quite some time and when they do, they are usually stymied as to how to fix it.

Re:wind chimes are the devil

[drinkypoo]

Have you ever seen the back of a twenty dollar bill... on weed?

Alternatively, have you ever sucked dick for a wind chime?

Re:wind chimes are the devil

[Farmer Tim]

Cops.

That's great but...

[eomnimedia]

The ULTIMATE hack would be to build a hard drive from a wind chime.

Re:That's great but...

[np_bernstein]

Not that hard:

Step 1: steal one of those windchimes
Step 2: reassemble

Re:That's great but...

[Tablizer]

The ULTIMATE hack would be to build a hard drive from a wind chime.

You have to go to Soviet Russia for that.

Actually I made one once, but it only stored 2 bits.

Re:That's great but...

[Farmer Tim]

"Actually I made one once, but it only stored 2 bits."

You built a two-bit hard drive, eh? That puts you up there with IBM...

Re:That's great but...

[DigitalHammer]

Howbout a hardchime from a wind-drive? ;)

Re:That's great but...

[unitron]

Or a wind driven hard drive?

Hey, if it works for cell phones...)

Ninjas!!

[PolyDwarf]

Now, finally... We've truely learned what the ninja's Real Ultimate Power is!

Too funny

[billsoxs]

Just think what you could do with some mini HDs A couple of 40 G iPods? - think of the music then!

In other useful advises...

[SlashThat]

Make Scrabble out of your old keyboard!

Finally

[lbmouse]

This is why I loved slashdot. Thank you Zonk and tyrani for showing the spirit of what geekdom is all about. A story with no political bullshit, no anti-corporate rhetoric, no M$ bashing. Just good-clean fun with IT stuff. BTW OT - Has anyone else seen the drives on TG [thinkgeek.com]?

Re:Finally

[theparanoidcynic]

Fuck the wind chime lobby! They probably voted for Bush, shop at Wal-Mart, and run Windows!

Re:Finally

[jim_v2000]

I don't know how good of IT stuff this is...seems more like this dude's gf got her hands on some HD's and didn't know what to do with them, so she...well, you saw that article.

Oblig...

[n0dalus]

I hope the site isn't hosted using one of those hard drives.

Re:Oblig...

[noidentity]

If it is hosted on one, I bet it's making a hell of a chime right now. Or maybe this guy [slashdot.org] has already tied fishing line around it.

NOLF2?

[VeneficusAcerbus]

I'm not sure why, but wind-chimes and ninja hackers reminds me of No One Lives Forever 2. -"Do you wanna go shopping this weekend?" -"Can't. I have an assassination."

Re:NOLF2?

[Grey Ninja]

That's just a vicious rumour started by some strange people. There is absolutely no such thing as a ninja hacker. =)

Re:NOLF2?

[Reziac]

Sez you. YOU still have all your fingers! :)

this is what happens

[L1nux_L0ser83]

when you lock someone in a cubicle for hours and give him a hard drive to play with... i wonder if this would catch on if it was marketed...quick someone get msft on the phone!

coral cache link

[jmpvm]

http://halogen.note.amherst.edu.nyud.net:8090/~win g/wingie/tech/hdchime/hdchime.php [nyud.net]

bad post ...it would be slashdot worthy...

[L1nux_L0ser83]

if you made it into a windchime...and it still ran...that would be /. worthy. someone do that hack and you shall be my new modgod!

How about clocks?

[antdude]

See here [srkconsulting.com]. /. rejected my submission. :P I posted about it from my site [aqfl.net].

Pentium earrings

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I thought to myself, what a dumb story. Maybe I'll post a story on Pentium earrings. On a whim I did a search [google.com]. The moral is: no matter how dumb you think your idea is, someone has actually done it before you.

Re:Pentium earrings

[NanoGator]

"On a whim I did a search."

Whoah.. anybody click on the first link in that search? Glad I have safe search off!

Re:Pentium earrings

[graffix_jones]

The best part is the Pentium Earrings are listed under "Miscellaneous Antiques".

Ethernet jewelery

[Bazman]

I made some bracelets and a necklace from CAT-5 cable for some geek friends of mine who were getting married, and then discovered ThinkGeek do ethernet bracelets. But ThinkGeek only use the inner strands, I made mine chunkier and multi-coloured by chopping up three lots of sleeving.

Put in a nice presentation box with an inscription to 'My Favourite Twisted Pair'. Geek joy.

Pics here [flickr.com] which I should have made a bit brighter...

Re:Ethernet jewelery

[Reziac]

'My Favourite Twisted Pair' -- oh man, that's rich!

Back when 256k and 1mb SIMMs ceased to be expensive, a lot of 'em found new lives as keychains and earrings. And I've seen CPUs used as tie tacks (works quite well -- they're a nice size for it).

BTW does anyone remember where the site is where a guy tells how to make clocks from old HD casings?

Re:Pentium earrings

[Joey Patterson]

Aha! See my idea is to install Linux on a dead badger, I seriously doubt anyone has attempted that.

Think again. [strangehorizons.com]

Copyright Infingement evasion tactic

[microbrewer]

A little project to do when the MPAA and RIAA contracted DOJ and FBI goons are about raid your house for widescale copyright infingement they will probaly walk right past your creative little windchimes full of copyrighted material.

Good stuff

[dauthur]

My landlady's got this huge assembly of useless amounts of windchimes, from metal to glass to wood. I'm sure she'll love a windchime like this, only if I can sacrifice my coasters (They make GREAT coasters and pocket mirrors).

Great idea. Now if only I can figure out if there's any more use for dead drives.

Windchimes drive me crazy.

[KillerHamster]

I wish ninjas would steal them more often.

cool?

[flacco]

Now straighten out the wires and you're done! To make the chime cooler, you can add more rings to it.

that's right, because there's nothing cooler than having a lot of rings on the wind-chime that you made out of a hard drive. except maybe your gold-plated babylon five pocket protector.

Something cool

[jim_v2000]

One of the computer labs at the school I was going to had the ceiling covered with old harddrive platters. There were also a bunch hanging down...it looked pretty sweet. I was wondering how hard it would be to tile a whole room in them...I think it would look awsome...all shiny n' stuff.

Lame...

[kryogen1x]

... in comparison to hard drive speakers [afrotechmods.com].

Ninja-hackers?

[Farmer Tim]

"...and the data recovered by ninja-hackers."

Exactly how does one hack a ninja? Is it like hacking an Aibo, only more silent and deadly? Sounds fun, anyway...

Re:Ninja-hackers?

[Carthag]

With a katana. Possibly a wakizashi.

Waiting for the punch line

[ramdaskm]

What a lame hack. Here's a real one

http://www.afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspeakers/hds pe akers.htm

What to do with the platters....

[Anonymous Coward]

We used them as plaques for retiring individuals. It was truely unique and folks loved them.

We used larger 12" platters from some real old disk packs we found. But, you can do the same with smaller platters.

They engrave nicely. And local engraving shop can handle them with ease.

At Last, A Use For My Collection!

[JohnPerkins]

I've been collecting hard drive platters for around 15 years now, with the specific intent to make wind chimes. The few times i've tried have been pretty bad. At last my prayers answered...and my neighbors annoyed.

Uhhh. I submitted this story on WEDNESDAY

[windowpain]

Turn Your Old Hard Drive into a Windchime. Wednesday February 23, @10:39AM
Rejected

And I even included a link to another page on the subject

WTF?

Re:Uhhh. I submitted this story on WEDNESDAY

[Anonymous Coward]

As with success in life, success in /. story submission is random, capricious and unfair.

The lesson to learn here is to never try :)

Re:Uhhh. I submitted this story on WEDNESDAY

[drinkypoo]

You must be new here. /. is a popularity contest and always has been.

Fun with hard disk parts

[Ernesto Alvarez]

Those platters are great as mirrors. At work we use some of them to peek into the machines in the server room to look for failures or for IDing chipsets.

The magnets that are part of the head control mechanism are great for securing things to metal surfaces (they are really strong).

Also, one of the admins used the rings to tighten a ceiling fan or something like that.

What a Hideous Piece of Crap!

[wosuna]

You could always go to a OSH and buy one for $20 rather than spending half a day assembling this hideous piece of crap!

um...

[dnight]

It looks like a shop project for the folks on the short bus...

Be carefull...

[slacktide]

Many HD platters these days are not metal, but glass. Found out the hard way when I tried to bend a busted DeskStar platter and it shattered into a billion tiny pieces, and cut up my hand.

Anything

[64Bit]

So now slashdot isn't stuff that matters it's stuff that is matter. Sheesh.

This isn't anything new

[jbohanon]

My brother built one of these several years ago. He even bent the hard drives so they played the Big Ben chime.

Promoting Magnet Ignorance

[Anemophilous Coward]

From the article:

Note that the magnet is extremely strong. Keep it away from other electronics and metal. Don't hurt yourself. Seriously, do not understand these magnets!

Really, trust me, you do not want to understand these things. If you understand a magnet, your head might explode. Please, put it down. Leave the magnet understanding to those who can handle it.

- AC

Quicker method

[isny]

Here is my quick method for doing the same thing:
1. Drill hole in hard drive
2. Attach string
Of course, these don't make the nice ringing sound of a wind chime, they tend to clunk together.
Here's another method:
1. Duct tape hard drive to tree.
If you do enough of these, is it a RAID wind chime?

I've done this...

[mako1138]

... and the problem is that since it's the same rings, there's no variety in the noise made, which is a necessity in a wind chime. You can use the platters too, but then things tend to get tangled, if you hang from the spindle.

Destroying harddrives

[Lord_Dweomer]

Just out of curiosity, and yes, this is somewhat on-topic, how useful is arts and crafts for getting rid of old harddrives?

I mean, lets say I theoretically have an old harddrive with information on it that I absolutely want permanently destroyed. Whats the best way to do it on the cheap for a college student? I don't have access to acid or anything else like that.

I don't want to just throw it out because god knows who could find it, so I've wondered about turning it into art that nobody would find suspicious.

Re:Destroying harddrives

[loraksus]

Even a .22 will screw up a hard drive, but you'll probably be able to recover some data (but you can silence a .22 really well, if you use sub sonic rounds) Just don't shoot it at an 45 degree angle or something.

Something a bit bigger, like a .380 or 9mm will
a.) put a nice 9mm hole into the platter
b.) make a nice and small entry hole
c.) warp the platter so severly that some of the platter will end up outside the casing.
linky [vehiclehitech.com]
d.) penetrate more than 1 drive.

That said, open it up and nuke the platters for

Acid?

[GlobalEcho]

do it on the cheap for a college student? I don't have access to acid or anything else like that.

I thought all college students had access to acid. And alcohol. And lots more means of permanent destruction besides!

Lots of hard drive destruction info on Usenet

[antispam_ben]

For some strange reason, this has been a recurring topic on sci.electronics.design.

Go to http://groups.google.com/ [google.com] and look for threads with these subject lines:

Hard Drive Zapping
Destroying a hard drive ?
A possible cure for FCC bandwidth woes.

Re:Destroying harddrives

[N3Bruce]

If you live in a dorm, and don't have access to the required heat for the above method, or access to things as a gas or electric range, (just put the platters right on the heating element), then perhaps some physical means of disruption would suffice. A piece of 220 grit sandpaper costs less than a buck, and should easily suffice in making the hard drive platters unreadable with only a few minutes of engagement with the flat surface of the platter.

For CDs containing sensitive material at work, I would ta

Re:Destroying harddrives

[drinkypoo]

Making radial cuts won't accomplish very much. You'd be better off just putting the thing through a shredder. The best way to destroy CDs is to burn them, although they are made of plastic so the smoke is toxic. The second best way is to break them up into little bitty bits, which is much more environmentally friendly. It's also more dangerous, though perhaps this particular objections does not apply in an office environment.

Re:Destroying harddrives

[N3Bruce]

At work, I use a utility knife that deeply scores the disk on both sides, usually delaminating the reflective media, and I put a slight spiral in the radial cuts, and run in different directions. I do not have convenient access to a shredder ironically, though they do have an industrial-strength shredder on the premises.

I purchased a cheap crosscut shredder for home use (for all of those credit card statements/offers, etc) and tried it on a CD with a paper label attached. The shredder advertised that it co

Hard Drive Coasters

[Broofa]

Cool! It's always fun to see hardware reuse. I made myself a set of drink coasters from and old NeXT cube hard drive [broofa.com]

Forget Torx, use a Dremel cutoff wheel

[antispam_ben]

From TFA:

Take the drive and remove the cover screws using the T-7 Torx key

This is improper use of a Torx, especially if you don't have one and feel you have to go out and buy one to open a disk drive you're not going to put back together as if it were never opened.

Using a Dremel moto-tool and a cutoff wheel to cut a regular slot takes only a few seconds per screw, and is much more in the spirit of destructive disassembly. Then you can use a regular flatblade screwdriver for slotted screws to remove the

Been doing this for years

[Phreakiture]

I've been building hard-drive wind chimes since 1996 or so and selling them at hamfests and other gatherings of the geek.

The ones made from larger drives (5" and some even 10") are the most popular as the parts are the most rare.

Re:erm..

[Tobias.Davis]

That's true man, take a hard drive apart and place any part of your body between the magnets. it sucks :)

Re:erm..

[Anonymous Coward]

my normal response to this stuff is "its friday, we are all nerds here we need something to do and it is a slow news day" but i cant even justify this post with that excuse. so what you strung some crap togther. most likely he posted something on his site and hope it got linked to on slashdot (we need a term for this hobby, my idea is slashbombing) now my excuse for links like this will be we lonely friday night slashdotters have got to have something to complain about

Re:erm..

[djupedal]

'Do Not Understand Happy Fun Time [google.com] Magnets!'

Older Drives

[Alien54]

The older drives have larger disks. Look for some older MFM 5.25 hard drives.

They make a very very nice true bell like ringing sound. The more modern drive disks sound tinny. I would take the modern disks and cut them into segments. This also makes sure that the data is not easily recoverable. That and the liberal use of sand paper.

seriously - look through grandma's closet. There might be something useful there.

Re:Older Drives

[Alien54]

Heat with a spot blow torch along the line you want to cut. Let cool slowly. This soften the metal for cutting.

Case in point....

[simetra]

A buck says this shows up as a Slashdot story within the next 72 hrs:

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/25/stance_angl e_ chair.html

Re:Fuck yankdot

[Farmer Tim]

Slashdot, one of the more leftward leaning news sites, "yank propaganda"?!? I hope this particular AC doesn't watch Fox news feeds, it could cause a brain haemorrage.

On second thought, I hope this particular AC does watch Fox news feeds...

Free Martha!

[billstewart]

Actually, she gets out of the slammer Real Soon Now.