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General discussion

Recycle old HDs(junk HDs)

May 10, 2006 1:29PM PDT

If you like me have older HDs of well under 1gb or worst, 20mb, its time to get rid of them. Yeah, I found some in my closet, I forgot about. Besides using some parts for crafts, those disks make great clocks, I simply tear down for aluminium and such. The best part I believe to keep is the magnets. These babies can hold a calendar quite well or some wrench upon working on a car. There's not alot of good stuff to save and many may simply throw unto the metal pile for the metal recyclers. Of course, if you're handy, re-use the stepper motor control chip for projects as well as any other electronic compents but these are small power items. Further, you'll need some special tools if you don't already to strip any non-alumium metal in order to get best grade. Sometime maybe had doing all this rather pitching onto the junk heap, but those magnets really are good items. Just a thought and in some cases found true faults of why HDs failed.

junkman -----Willy Happy

Discussion is locked

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What about the 'dataphone'?
May 22, 2006 12:29PM PDT

Acoustic coupler? yeah, I almost forgot about those! The box had those big rubber cups that you placed the handset onto.

The next big advance was the dataphone.. remember they were the 'grey' phones that sat beside the black voice phone. You called the number, and when it started beeping, you pulled up one of the off-hook pins to go to 'data mode'.

There was a lot of finger pointing in those days.. when a transmission failed, we blamed the phone lines, and of course, the phone company blamed our equipment. Fun times!

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Going back in time!
May 18, 2006 11:05PM PDT

Wow!

I remember spending a small fortune on a 40 MB drive in the 80s (and on a 12 MHz 80286 with 640 KB memory!). That was the time when Lotus 1-2-3 was able to fit on 2 floppies (360 KB if I remember well) and Windows was only a dream at Microsoft's headquarters. 40 MB was a lot of disk space then. Today, I have spreadsheets bigger than that, not to mention video, and I have about 25 000 times more disk space on my network computers. Computers have tremendously increased in power and usability since then!

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Old?
May 18, 2006 11:18PM PDT

Anybody have or remember a Jaquard? To big to use for boat anchors. I have 2 of these monsters in my basement. Both still work! 15" disc. have to use scope to set tracking everytime it is relocated.

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Nope...
May 19, 2006 1:16AM PDT

You got $50K to buy a CD drive. Plus, understand they weren't made for PCs but for mainframe applications or similar. PCs weren't having all parts so easily installable. Man, this was in its early beginning, you lucky you any s/w to do anything w/o "YOU" the user making it. Commerical s/w was limited and usually did only one task well. the users were engineers and techies or savvy people who progressed forward only because they bore the brunt of it all. -----Willy

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PC/XT
May 21, 2006 11:37PM PDT

The PC/XT was the first IBM PC with a hard disk. It was a 10 MByte disk 5-1/4 full height drive. I replaced the "B" drive on the original PC. Historical information - the Original PC had up to two floppy disk drive "A" and "B", therefore when the "B" drive was removed for the hard drive it became "C", which brings us to today and explains why we have an "A", and a "C" drive but no "B" drive. I owned a PC/XT

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make them into external HDs
May 19, 2006 5:31AM PDT

a friend turned me on to a solution i never even considered. Find them on the internet. A USB to IDE connector with power supply adapter, and you have a still-usable external HD to store digital pics, music, or if you have an old 10gb HD like I do, store TV shows that you've recorded from your TV card. I love it I have 3 old HD's still useful to me. Ain't making refrig. magnets out of them just yet.

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hd fun
May 19, 2006 6:52AM PDT

i like to take my old and non-functioning hard drives out and shoot them with my rifle, its interesting to see hew the bullet bounces off the magnet and around in the case!

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Big copier too
May 19, 2006 1:41PM PDT

I used to "plink" them with the 22, but now I rather not have those small bits and pieces on the ground. The big smelter can have it all, except for what I keep. You can't get the feeling of tossing computer items next to an axle or brake parts and get some $$$ for it even if a little. Wink Those old 286 systems(slightly stripped) and dumped on the big heap. I think I saw an big old copier with a few holes as well. I guess it couldn't be fixed or no parts found, it looked intact. -----Willy

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Ok if you don't mind slow drives.
May 19, 2006 8:10AM PDT

This is a possibility, but more often than not, the old HD is usually small and slow. If you don't mind that, then, yes you can re-cycle them as external drives.

Many places are selling external cases for HDs, that include power and cables. There is even one I saw that offers both a USB 2.0 interface, as well as firewire. The beauty of the firewire job, is that you can daisy chain multiple HDs together with this interface, so as you get more HD's, just add them to the chain.

However, giving the falling costs of HD storage media, it is hard to justify keeping an old slow HD, when you can get a fast one so cheap.

pl

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not sure what you pay in the US for the adaptor
May 19, 2006 5:57PM PDT

(mine cost just over $30) but a solution for the case can be an old CD drive...

strip it down, position the HD, epoxy/super glue it in place and voila! "instant external HD"


.

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$19 for a complete case
May 19, 2006 10:13PM PDT

Well, at TirgerDirect.ca, a complete case, including all mounting hardware, power supply, on/off switch, LED indicator, and USB cable is only $25 Cdn ($19 USD at TirgerDirect.com) Of course, it is all assembled and ready for you to insert your old hard drive. In fact, the ad specifically recommends this case for you to "Reuse your Old 3.5" IDE Hard Drives as External Storage".

ref: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=1734042&sku=M501-1184

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(NT) (NT) wow!!! then ignore my last post ;-)
May 20, 2006 2:36AM PDT