What can be made of a non-working hard disk. Five reasons not to throw out the old hard drive

Before you begin to bother your hDD And let him go away, let's talk about the security of the data. The "dead hard disk" means that the disk does not function properly, and any of your attempts to restore these by the programmatically not crowned with success. If the disk contains really important data, and you suspect that you can find an eccentric, which will decide to get them, then erase the data so that they cannot be recovered :). Although if the only valuable on your screw was the stolen rips of concerts of Bon Jovi, then your glare ripe for any DIY projects (projects "do it yourself").

In principle, all DIY-projects with hard drives can be divided by levels of technical knowledge and experimental skills. Let's start with simple to complex :).

Production of spare parts

The simplest, but useful thing that can be extracted from the hard drive is magnets. In hard drives are used supercrimal magnets, and they can be used in the farm for any. Here is an example, as one character built a knife holder into the kitchen. He took a wooden plank, extracting the core with the help of the chisel, and drove there magnets.

In general, it is of course in vain, because when the girlfriend has knives at hand, and not far away, it is not far away :). It is good that the frying pan does not cling.

They are often used to magnetize screwdrivers or as a fridge magnets.

Add more creative

The usual pancakes from the screw can be turned into a watches steampunk. To do this, you need a little detail, which can be found in hobby stores, or try to unnoticate the Babuli alarm clock.

And if "your hands is not for boredom", the next one can assemble the LED clock from the hard disk.

Another old hard disk can be turned into turning over-sensitive input device. You can see how the craftsman turned his old HDD to the remote control for DJ.

Here is just a small sketch of interesting solutions from old hardware.

I wonder how our readers use killed hard drives into everyday life.

Hello everyone! Actually, the idea is not Nova. They say in the internet full of such records, I have not seen the idea myself. I was impatible here, you know, urgently sharpen a knife and a screwdriver ... But "Oh God!" Emery in the garage, and at work even there is no file ... Well, we "sysadmin" the people are simple and I climb, it means in the "Break of the Motherland" and took out ... Old hard drive from PC ...

We take scissors, screwdrivers, sandpaper, our HDD and bilateral scotch

All we need.

Remove the bolts. The sticker always hides 7 bolt.

……………………………………………………………….

We open. And there everything is beautiful so packed. shine.

We unscrew the drive of the heads and the head movement lever, the magnets for experiments, the rest can be walked.

Unscrew the cover of the disk mount and remove the washer above the disk, as well as the disk itself

Put the disk on the sandpaper, supply the contours and cut out

Get these bagels)

Glue two-way tape to our disk (you can add to glue, but it will be easier to replace the sandpaper on the scotch)

……………………………………………………………………………………

ISKIM))))
Well, about the work of this device.

Sandage to take a better small fraction, is weak on a large engine. But I need to sharpen everything necessary, even very much. So far!

Introduction
Most laptop owners are sooner or late face the problem of lack of space on. As a rule, the laptops of the screen dimension up to 15 inches inclusive do not have a free second slot for 2.5 inch device. Therefore, the owners are forced to think either about the replacement of the laptop itself, or the replacement of its hard drive. After replacing the hard drive, there is always an old drive, which can be easily transformed into an external USB drive to carry data.
Naturally, you can purchase a mobile 2.5-inch hard drive and turn it into an external drive. Before the cost of external drives allows. For example, at the time of writing an article for a mobile hard drive of 250 GB, 40 dollars are asked, and for a 500 GB device from WD is asked only 45 dollars.
We are determined with the type of hard drive.
For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that the external drive can also turn the usual desktop 3.5 inch hard drive, - just you can't call it mobile. If you have an unused 2.5 or 3.5-inch hard drive, then first of all it is necessary to determine with the type of its interface.
Today, the following types of interface types are existing on the market: IDE (ATA) and various SATA options. As a rule, all SATA interfaces are inversely compatible with each other, and we will not stop on their variations. The case is completely different between IDE and SATA interfaces that are absolutely not compatible with each other and have different connectors.

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In the figure, you are presented two hard drives with various interfaces. Winchesters have a 2.5-inches mobile format. Left is represented by Winchester with SATA interfaceThe on the right is a hard drive with an IDE interface.

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In our hands turned out to be 250 GB Winchester from Western Digital Series Scorpio Blue with SATA interface. This drive has been used for a long time in laptop Acer.But its capacity has become lacking, and it has been replaced with a more spacious 500 GB solution.

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Despite the long-term use, the work of the Winchester did not cause any complaints, so it was decided to use it as an external mobile drive. To do this, it was necessary to find an external case for him that we did. External Case Agestar for 2.5 inches mobile hard drive.
Computer components stores offer many different external cases for 2.5-inch hard drives. Their key difference is as follows:
- body manufacturing material,
- type of external port (interface),
- cost.

As a rule, in stores presented various cases with uSB interface 2.0, in a significantly smaller number, cases with an ESATA interface are presented, even less cases with their combination of USB 2.0 & ESATA. Several cases with a modern USB 3.0 interface were found on sale, but their cost exceeded the cost of the Winchesis itself, so they were not considered.

The key difference between USB 2.0 and ESATA interfaces is the data rate. Using the USB 2.0 interface allows maximum compatibility, since the port data is available on all computers. The significant minus of the USB 2.0 interface is a low data transfer rate, which will not allow to reveal the full speed potential of your hard drive.

The ESATA port is more promising, but it is not much common and occurs only in expensive versions of motherboards, buildings and laptops. The ESATA interface allows you to fully reveal the SATA device potential.

Production material may also be the most different. In a simple case, it is plastic. In more expensive variations, an aluminum case with a leather cover included.
The cost of external cases is also returned. The cheapest option will cost the user in 3 dollars, expensive versions will cost more than 100 dollars.

Purchase 100 dollar Case for Winchester, which costs less than $ 40 when it is new and twice cheaper after the start of operation, at least, wastefully. Therefore, for testing, we were granted a case worth with an equal symbolic 3 dollars, - Agestar sub2p1. Complete set and external inspection of Agestar sub2p1.

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From the device worth three dollars, we did not expect any miracles as in terms of configuration, as in terms of performance. The device is supplied modestly packed in the package. The front wall of the device covers the cardboard with the enumeration of the key characteristics of the device. This is support for 2.5 inch mobile hard drives or solid-state drives With SATA interface, presence of USB 2.0 data transmission interface and various color options.
Justice should be noted, our suppliers confirmed that in addition to the black color of this case, they did not meet any other.

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After opening the package, we were pleasantly surprised by the fact that there is a manual manual completely in Russian.

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Case is fully made of plastic. On the front wall there are paper stickers with an indication of the model, which in any case are stuck, so we recommend that they immediately remove them from the surface of the device.

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Case manufacturing material is a soft plastic black color, which does not smell, uniform in all its structure.

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The cover of the device is broken into two different sides, which ensures easy removal and installation of the hard drive in the outer case.

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The two sides of the outer case are fixed using a plastic latch made of body material. Thanks to the recesses on the covers walls, some glasses with liquid are reliably fixed, or leaving the device in the rain, they will drive themselves to any problems.

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The device is intended for SATA hard drives that we have repeatedly emphasized. Inside disintegration controllers with SATA ports for powering and data transfer.

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On the side wall of the smoked mini USB port To transfer data and power hard drive. There is no additional port to ensure the power of the drive, which can cause some user problems. With a weak power supply, which undertakes voltage over 5 volts, often encounter problems with the problems of the hard drive. As a rule, connecting the drive directly to the port on the motherboard, and not on the case system Block, Application of quality USB cable Allows you to forget about this problem.

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Computer component sellers are often as the advantage of a particular external case talk about the presence of a USB data cable for data transmission or offered to purchase it separately if it is not. We advise our users to not pay attention to it, since the Mini-USB-USB cable is usually available in almost every family and often comes with mobile phones. In our case, we successfully applied the entered data cable from mobile phone Nokia.

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The next stage we have installed the Winchester in Case. It is done simply enough, - by easy pressing. The most important thing is to pre-rotate the Winchester correctly according to the Case Power and SATA data ports located in the case.

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The absence of any protruding elements on the Winchester controller scheme allows not to take care of its rear surface when transporting and using the device.

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Some users may argue that the plastic case does not provide an adequate heat sink from the hard drive. Naturally, external cases made of aluminum are much more efficient to cope with this task. It should not be forgotten that mobile hard drives do not have such high energy consumption to suffer from overheating and in laptops, as a rule, they are not additionally cooled.

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After completing the assembly of the device, the step of its testing and use occurs. The supply of voltage to the device is accompanied by a blue LED with a luminescence, which also symbolize the user about the data transfer process. It should be noted that not all starting work with the created external drive will flow smoothly. If the hard drive has already been used, it was formatted and sections were created on it, - you will not have problems with the start of work. It is decided as the usual flash drive using the Plug & Play method. But for those users who purchased a new hard drive without formatting and with the lack of sections, will be a problem that will be associated with the lack of a drive letter in the My Computer tab.
To do this, you need to create partitions on the Winchester and formatting it. This can be done through various boot discsBut it is better not to bother and do it in the Windows operating system itself.

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To do this, you need to go to the "Control Panel" through the Start section, then visit the "Administration" section. In this section, select "Computer Management", where in the "Disk Management" tab you can place and format the only connected external drive. After creating partitions, their formatting you will have access to them through the My Computer tab and you will be exchanged with a drive, as with a conventional hard drive. Test configuration.
The collected external drive was tested as desktop computer, on the base modern processor Core i7 and no less modern motherboardand on a laptop Acer Aspire 7730 based on core processor 2 duo. Should noted that the level of performance on two various systems It turned out to be comparable equal.

1. The speed of reading data was tested in the HD TACH 3.0.4.0 program

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It is nice to note that the external drive assembled by us shows a much higher level of performance than the external Winchester WD My Passport Essential tested. The maximum data transfer rate was 34.3 MB / s, and the average delay of about 17.9 ms.

2. The read speed in the HD Tune 4.5 program.

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In the second synthetic test, we received similar previous data, which also turned out to be somewhat better than the official external Winchester WD My Passport Essential.

3. File recording speed of 64 MB in HD TUNE 4.5.

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A somewhat more valuable is typical to practice testing, by recording files of 64 MB. In this test, we received quite expected results, which were also limited only by the features of the USB 2.0 interface.
Separately, it should be noted that throughout the testing the temperature of the Winchester did not exceed 35 degrees Celsius, while a similar hard drive mounted in a laptop had a temperature of about 43 degrees. Therefore, the experience of the working conditions of the Winchester in this case by the users will be superfluous.

4. Operating boot speed windows systems 7.

In the course of practical testing for the speed of the image operating system Windows 7 We got an allault for other external drives with USB 2.0 interface results.

5. Assessment of the drive performance in Windows 7.

We conducted testing the performance of the external drive assembled by our operating system by the Windows 7 operating system. To do this, command line You must call the command: "Winsat Disk -Drive G -Ran -Write -Count 10", where "G" is the letter of the test disk in the system.

From the test results it can be seen that the drive we collected received a much higher rating than rather than factory solution WD My Passport Essential. Conclusion.
According to the materials of this article, it can be seen that any mobile hard drive can be without unnecessary trouble to turn into a good external drive. Especially for testing, we were asked to provide us with the cheapest external case, worth 3 dollars. Three dollars allow you to get an excellent external drive from the mobile hard drive, at least for data storage. Not to mention the fact that the same external case facilitates the recovery of data with the Winchester of the "Dead" laptops.

Despite the fact that Agestar products many criticize low qualityFor many years of its use, I have only a positive impression about him. First of all, it is for the democratic cost. Marriage is found in all manufacturers, let the Agestar, this indicator is somewhat higher than that of thermaltake. But the latter does not have an analogue of the presented external case for three dollars and with a guarantee of 6 months. Products of Agestar We are handing a golden honorary medal for the optimal productivity ratio / price.

In this publication, consider what you can make using unnecessary old tough disk.

Neodymium magnets in the computer

First you need to unscrew several screws that are attached to the parts of the case. Under the lid we see a neodymium magnet. In hard drives, very powerful magnets are used that are capable of lifting weight 1300 times more of their own.

On all modern drives there are always two limiters of the magnetic head unit and, respectively, 2 neodymium magnets. To remove the 2 magnet, you need to unscrew another screw and remove it along with the holder or unscrew the block of magnetic heads, and then pushing the screwdriver.

The use of neodymium magnets is almost limitless. For clamps and locks, toys and entertainment, cleaning motor and transmission oil, searching for treasures and lost iron objects under water, manufacture of engines and generators, restoring the magnetic properties of other magnets and much more.

Mini emery from hard disk

To do this, you first need to transfer the size of the disk to the sandpaper, it is convenient to do with a circulation. You should use a shallow grain sandpaper to do not particularly overload the engine. So, cut out the outer diameter with scissors and the inner stationery knife.

Printed sandpaper where you can with glue. But in order to do not wait for the drying of the glue for a long time and so that it can be easily changed with sandpaper, you can use two-way scotch.

Newspaper is ready. We connect it to the connector from the computer unit and use it. With its small dimensions, such an empty machine is quite powerful. Its power is enough for sharpening screwdrivers, pencils, chisels and curly cutting knives.

How to eliminate pc noise

Often old computer cases are very noisy. One of the reasons for this problem is a straight mount hard disk To the PC housing. When reading information, the disk develops huge speeds and, accordingly, a small vibration appears, which is transmitted to the entire computer case. A small factory defect, bad soldering or not twisted to the end of the cable in the case of the case will always remind you of it.

To eliminate this problem, we will need only cut 4 rubber strips. It can be old cycling chambers, blown baby balls or a piece of silicone car rug. We screw the ribbons to the hard disk and secure it to a new place just below the DVD-ROM or even instead.

In general, the excellent result is obtained, since all vibrations are absorbed by rubber bands. Also, this device can be called antishok. If you are inappropriately hit by a PC foot, it will not affect the hard disk.

If you have a unnecessary, old one at home, and there may be a non-working hard drive and, in addition, you like to do an interesting nonsense, then you are at. Today we will look at another, except for the main, use of a hard disk. There is nothing sensible and useful in this, but I hope you will be interested.

What do you do with an old hard disk?

Hard disk during operation rotates with a mad speed. Process hard work The disk can be found in the article and what do you think it will be if the disk is unwinding to the rabid speed and start walking through the white light? That is what our old hard drive will do. The following describes the process that precedes this fun.

Preparation of an old hard disk

To prepare an old hard disk for this event, you need to remove its cover and remove the hard disk head, with which information is read. If you do everything right, then the hard disk should look like this:

As you can see, pull out the magnetic disk itself is no longer a problem. It is this result that we need to achieve: a magnetic disk should be easily blinded with its mink, but this is not yet necessary to do. When the time comes, he will get away from there himself.

What do you do next?

After that, we need to connect the power to our old hard disk. Do it follows from the power supply of the computer. If you connect the power to the hard disk and supply electricity into the power supply, then our disk will start spinning. This we achieve. And now slowly lower the hard drive to the floor and start quietly tilting it so that the open side is approaching the floor. Somewhere in perpendicular position (plus minus a few degrees), the disc will be able to fly from its mink. You can help him in this. Here you make sure that the direction of rotation of the disk does not coincide with your location. As soon as the disk flies, he will die from the eye on the floor.

The principle is probably understandable. It is like toy cars whose wheels need to be charged with the inverse movement, after which they will pass far enough. Here the same: I charge our disk kinetic energy and descend it to the floor. Only unlike the toy typewriter, here you need to be a little careful. Since some hard drives can be unwound to 15,000 revolutions per minute, then you are something like a edged circle. Therefore, it is not necessary to put fragile subjects or close familiar on the way of following the old hard disk.

But it is not necessary to worry about security. The promoted disk runs perfectly right, so you can choose the trajectory yourself and not be afraid that it will not be done there. Some destructive action In relation to the floor and the wall (the only thing that in my case was not afraid to meet face to face with the disk) did not observe.

So you can make a new toy from the old hard disk.