I've seen people post want ads for the platters for 'art projects', but that's about it. Honestly they're not especially repair-friendly devices for end users (chunky MFM/RLL drives from the early '80s, maybe. Multi-gigabyte 3.5" drives from the mid-'90s, not really.)

There's always some minescule chance that someone's trying to recover data from a drive with a burned out controller board & needs the exact one you have (assuming that's not what failed on yours), but honestly, I wouldn't count on that happening. Most home users don't care enough about their data to go that deep into it.

I guess you could see if any professional-level data recovery services might need them & ship them off.

pico1180 wrote on 2020-01-25, 03:46:

i have about half a dozen mid 90's hard drives that don't work. is there a market for them as parts? i am resisting the urge to send them to the recycle on the idea they me be valuable to someone looking for parts. is that a thing?

Fancy techno clock? Circuit bender instrument? Cut rate disc sander?

I always save the platters and magnets .

I use broken hard drives as dummy loads when testing power supplies (assuming they're not THAT broken and still power up).

I salvage the magnets and memory chips, I used to salvage platters too but those I have many of already 🤣.

The really would make good paperweights.

I've made wind-chimes from the platters before.

My friend: The tiles in your bathroom are kind of small, eh ?
Me: Small but branded.
My friend: What brand ?
Me: Intel ...

Remove the platters and heads and you've got an air tight stash box.

Hard drives are not air tight, they wouldn't work then...

First ever air-tight hard drives are those filled with Helium, which came to market just a few years ago.

I have removed magnets from few of them, but they make me feel sick for some reason. I only need to hold a magnet like that on my hand for 30 seconds and I start feeling really sick.
Really strange.

dr.ido wrote on 2020-01-25, 10:05:

Remove the platters and heads and you've got an air tight stash box.

Whenever I need to hide something at home, I put it inside one of my old computers. Nobody would ever bother to look there 😉

There's a cafe that uses floppy diskettes as drinks coasters. I have some broken drives when there is a need for paperweight 🤣, but probably going to just send them to recycling, there was not any important data back then and the drives are either burnt, cracked open or unusable.

There's also a guy on youtube who crafts micro drills and micro polishers with motors from HDD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz9W2_AgJXY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVRF13RenU8

This requires a controller board ($3 from China), which comes with a knob to adjust rpm, a 12VDC power source and some skill as a craftsman.

The do make amazing paperweights. That is for sure.

I didn't think to salvage them for their magnets. Good idea!

Not sure if I want to tile my bathroom with them though 😒

I may try an art piece though. Concentric platter overlay in a round frame? That may actually look kind of cool...

You can use the heads' mechanics to control piece of mirror and this way using laser, create shapes and other stuff like that on a surface or in the smoke. 😉

my Maxtor 4GB drive in my Pentium 1 machine finally gave up its ghost, R.I.P. 1997-2020. It had rough bearings, had many bad sectors, it was just not healthy, one day when i was going to power up to play some DOS games. i heard odd sounds and it just hung there on the BIOS. I just pulled the HDD out. took it apart and saved the platters, magnets, and motor from it and chucked the rest into the recycling bin. I just threw in a 40GB WD Caviar HDD into it and got the full 40GB working with OnTrack and reinstalled Windows 98 SE on it.

Well... https://youtu.be/Oym7B7YidKs?t=60

quicknick wrote on 2020-01-25, 20:53:

Well... https://youtu.be/Oym7B7YidKs?t=60

That was outstanding. I got a good laugh while also being highly captivated and intrigued.