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Hardware Hacking It's funny. Laugh.

How to Build a Hard Drive Wind Chime For Spring 197

Posted by Zonk from the beware-ninja-hackers dept.
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."
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How to Build a Hard Drive Wind Chime For Spring More

How to Build a Hard Drive Wind Chime For Spring

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  • Rarr (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tobias.Davis ( 844594 ) <tobias.davis@nospAm.gmail.com> on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:45PM (#11784185) Homepage
    I built a shank out of my hard drive, with the head sensor assembly. It's hard to smuggle into jail.
    • the goatse guy should be able to help you with that.
    • "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 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:46PM (#11784188) Journal
    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 (Score:3, Funny)

      by rob_squared ( 821479 )
      There's a joke in here somewhere; "girlfriend", "hard-drive", "wind blowing."


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

    • 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 (Score:2)

      by MiKM ( 752717 )
      Slashdotters have girlfriends!?

    • Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hammurderer ( 819640 )
      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... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:46PM (#11784192)
    ...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 (Score:2, Funny)

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

    • 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.
      • Don't the platters rust?
        • 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....
    • 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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:47PM (#11784197)
    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.

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:47PM (#11784205)
    would doing this void the warranty of my HD?

  • I'm a bad person. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:51PM (#11784232)
    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.

  • Already (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:52PM (#11784241) Journal
    Oh yeah? Mine started making those noises already while *still* in the PC!......oh shit

  • Didn't have to be a hard drive.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by prakslash ( 681585 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:53PM (#11784251)

    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 (Score:5, Funny)

    by PortWineBoy ( 587071 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:54PM (#11784259)
    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.

  • That's great but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by eomnimedia ( 444806 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:55PM (#11784263)
    The ULTIMATE hack would be to build a hard drive from a wind chime.

  • Ninjas!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by PolyDwarf ( 156355 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:55PM (#11784267)
    Now, finally... We've truely learned what the ninja's Real Ultimate Power is!

  • Too funny (Score:2, Funny)

    by billsoxs ( 637329 )
    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... (Score:4, Funny)

    by SlashThat ( 859697 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @09:58PM (#11784286)
    Make Scrabble out of your old keyboard!

  • Finally (Score:2, Insightful)

    by lbmouse ( 473316 )
    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]?

  • Oblig... (Score:5, Funny)

    by n0dalus ( 807994 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @10:01PM (#11784310) Journal
    I hope the site isn't hosted using one of those hard drives.
  • 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."
  • 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!
  • 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!
  • See here [srkconsulting.com]. /. rejected my submission. :P I posted about it from my site [aqfl.net].

  • Pentium earrings (Score:5, Funny)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @10:14PM (#11784380) Journal
    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.
    • "On a whim I did a search."

      Whoah.. anybody click on the first link in that search? Glad I have safe search off!
    • The best part is the Pentium Earrings are listed under "Miscellaneous Antiques".
    • 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...
      • '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?

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I wish ninjas would steal them more often.
  • 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.

  • 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.
  • ... in comparison to hard drive speakers [afrotechmods.com].
  • "...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...
  • 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.... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by 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.
  • 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 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by windowpain ( 211052 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @10:48PM (#11784597) Journal
    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?
  • 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.
  • You could always go to a OSH and buy one for $20 rather than spending half a day assembling this hideous piece of crap!
  • It looks like a shop project for the folks on the short bus...

  • Be carefull... (Score:2, Informative)

    by slacktide ( 796664 )
    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.
  • So now slashdot isn't stuff that matters it's stuff that is matter. Sheesh.
  • 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 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anemophilous Coward ( 312040 ) on Friday February 25, 2005 @11:37PM (#11784863)
    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 (Score:2, Funny)

    by isny ( 681711 )
    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... (Score:2, Informative)

    by mako1138 ( 837520 )
    ... 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 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Saturday February 26, 2005 @02:37AM (#11785578) Homepage
    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.

    • 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
    • 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!
    • 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.

  • Hard Drive Coasters (Score:2, Informative)

    by Broofa ( 541944 )
    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]
  • 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

  • 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.

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