Take the magnets out and re-purpose them. I keep some screwed to a wall to hold screwdrivers and other ferromagnetic tools for quick access. With enough of them you could probably build a generator.
The platters make for nice wind chimes when hung on strings.
Very old drives might have memory, logic or D/A chips worth salvaging on their circuit boards.

^ What 133MHz said.

(Plays around with the nifty magnets from a recently dead 40gb WD HDD 😁 ).

Make a clock out of one. Take them apart and turn in the platinum and aluminum. Have fun with the magnets.

I trash broken equipment.

saturn wrote:

Make a clock out of one. Take them apart and turn in the platinum and aluminum. Have fun with the magnets.

On that note, there's also making a speaker out of one.

Recycle them!

Our company collects the drives which cannot be used in a large bin, then they are sent to a facility which pulls out the platters, the metals, and the circuit boards for recycling. Naturally, we have a lot of hard drive magnets too. 😀

Remove the magnet's and mount them in the back of a long piece of wood.
Mount that on the wall in the kitchen and hang you'r kitchen knifes on it.

Use them as a paperweight 😉.

PeterLI wrote:

I trash broken equipment.

+1

Next HDD that breaks, I'll make a sander/grinder out of it.

Get creative...

Remove the magnets and put one on the end of your automobiles' oil-pan drain-plug. Next time you drop your transmission pan to change the filter, pop one in there near the original magnet. Or you can make a ring with a hose-clamp and glue a bunch of HD magnets to it and wrap it around your oil-filter.

meljor wrote:

Get creative...

looks great. Love the cpu seat.

meljor wrote:

Get creative...

Ooh even has a heated seat 😊

Logistics wrote:

Remove the magnets and put one on the end of your automobiles' oil-pan drain-plug. Next time you drop your transmission pan to change the filter, pop one in there near the original magnet. Or you can make a ring with a hose-clamp and glue a bunch of HD magnets to it and wrap it around your oil-filter.

Those metal shaving scare the crap out of me. Were do they come from I think... what is wearing out I think.... but its beater if they collect on the magnets and not in the tans/engine. What scares me even more is that my car's tans never have a filter and it completely sealed.... 😵

Anyway good idea. 😎

What is it? A BMW? My Paps and I have ressurected many a BMW , with those lifetime fluid transmissions, which were sold because they "need a new transmission", and all they really needed was nice, new fluid. It's not as easy as normal to do because there is no dip-stick/fill-tube. You gotta get under the car or put it on a lift and pump new fluid in through a fill-point. But that's for another thread, and another forum.

But I would still use hard-drive magnets for this very purpose because they are just so strong!