Friday Fun With Hard Drives

Let’s end this terrifying week on a positive note by exploring the many fun things you can do with old dead hard drives.

LED Display Clock

First up is this LED display/clock. It consists of a series of colored LED lights which flash on and off below a slot cut in the hard drive platter. The perceptual illusion images it creates are just amazing!

Speaker

Next, we have a pair of drives set up as a speaker. They don’t call it a voice coil for nothing!

Music Video

Sticking with the Radiohead theme, here’s a home-made music video, including a recreation of the song, made entirely with old computer junk. Including ten hard drives.

Wind Chime

Not as creative, but still, it’s an old hard drive!

Stirling Engine

Stirling engines are the unicorn of the car-geek community. This one includes hard drive platters!

Eddy Currents With Hard Disk Magnets

Hard disk magnets are awesome. They’re super-strong rare earth magnets – my kids love ’em! Here is a demonstration of eddy currents using old hard disk and Lego train parts. Double geek!