jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

As I've mentioned several times, I tend to keep things because they may be useful someday. I took inventory of my hard drives, and I have nine of them, mostly from old computers. They range in size from 250GB to 8TB. I have (or will have) two enclosures that will hold four, and I have three or more portable contraptions that let me insert a drive for quick access.

Some of these drives have been formatted, and some have useful data. Since the drives are old, none of them will be sole proprietors of my data. When the Mediasonic 4-drive box arrives on Wednesday, I'll put the best drives into that. It's going to be a good time-killer deciding what to put where and then doing the putting.

That 8TB drive is a WD Black. Three years ago, someone posted here about a temporary sale on them at Amazon - $172.00.

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

I had a shelf full of old, mainly deceased hard drives. I took them out of the cases and wrapped them in colored clingy plastic. There was a local little shop with odd & unusual stuff. Offered them for cheap to sell as Geek Paper Weights. No dice. They sat on the shelf for years. Then I discovered a geek shop that would recycle them. I am told some have gold-plated connectors so recycling means harvesting them.

If you can stack them high enough, can you call them your Tower of Babble.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

I take my old drives apart to retrieve their powerful head moving magnet.
Those magnets hold lot of paper. :-)

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

I take my old drives apart to retrieve the body casting for recycling.

Red6

Before disposing of any hard drive I take my power drill and put a couple of holes through it. That ensures that no one short of the FBI or NSA is going to retrieve anything from it. It takes only a few seconds. You can never be sure what's left on it. Even the best commercially available software disk cleaners can leave some data.

buckbrush Loc: Texas then Southwest Oregon

I also use the magnets with a Zip tie thru the hole to wave it along a wall and find the drywall screw heads so I can hang a picture easily. It's small, and so much faster than using stud finders. You'd be amazed how powerful those magnets are.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

They have powerful magnets inside. I have some dead drives in the garage. I should take them apart and see what I can use.

I used to get notices about government auctions. There was interest in buying old, large computers just because of the gold, silver, and copper in them. When the army was using the style of Jeep that was replaced by the Humvee, if you bought one at auction, you had to either cut it up or have it run over by a tank. They were too dangerous to drive on the road - too inclined to tip over.

KillroyII Loc: Middle Georgia

On the subject of disks... I want to thank you for previously mentioning CrystalDiskInfo. I downloaded and run it and found that I have 1 external (via USB) that stays considerably warmer... I may have a problem “cooking” there. I have 4 separate backup drives (this is 1 of the 4) so it will not be a catastrophe if it dies but I am glad I know... again, thanks

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I also keep track of the hours and starts of my computers at the beginning of every month. I have a drive with about 8,500 hours on it.

Toby

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