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Letting go of old, tiny hard drives...

kirkbross

kirkbross

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 6, 2007
666
22
Los Angeles
How many people here have become helpless HD pack rats? I can't bring myself to throw away my old, tiny-capacity hard drives and they litter my junk boxes everywhere.

I have a bunch of ATA66 drives -- 4GB, 20GB, 40GB and 60GB -- from a hundred years ago whose data are already doubled on one of my several 1TB drives. I want to crush them into powder when I see them littering my junk box, but I am overcome with admiration and awe. It's kind of like looking at a black widow in my garage: I know I have to kill it, but I hesitate because they are just so cool in that they pack so much power into such a small bite. Kind of like hard drives.

I successfully, so far, quit alcohol four years ago so why can't I quit useless hard drives?

Admitted I was powerless over drives; that my storage of storage had become unmanageable.
 
Do you have a friend of relative that has an older computer that could benefit from one of your 40's or 60's? You can also buy an enclosure and make one of the bigger ones into an external hard drive. I normally donate them to friends or family, I like to see them live a useful life after I am done with them.:D
 
Give them to a charitable thriftshop. They'll sell 'em cheap, benefiting people who may not afford a new 1TB, and the profit goes to the charity. Win/win.
In my neck of the woods, we have the Salvation Army(poverty), Value Village(diabetes) and the YWCA store. Give it a think!:)
 
wpc33 said:
Give them to a charitable thriftshop. They'll sell 'em cheap, benefiting people who may not afford a new 1TB, and the profit goes to the charity. Win/win.
In my neck of the woods, we have the Salvation Army(poverty), Value Village(diabetes) and the YWCA store. Give it a think!:)
Click to expand...
Suggestions on a Thrift Shop in Los Angeles? I have three 1TB drives and deal in Pro Tools audio so 40 and 60GB is kind of small to me... at least not worthy of taking up a drive bay in my Mac Pro.

The enclosure thing is something I have now, but those tend to pile up too and I never use them. I'd rather put 1TB drives in the enclosures.
 
I'm guilty of this too. I recently built an HTPC that is using my previously unused old hard drives. Since the HTPC pulls most of it's media off other systems on my home network there's really no reason for it to have fast, big hard drives.
 
Lol i have a few small ones, but im one of the people that cant afford to buy new ones im still stuck with a 20GB in my G4 and a 40Gb in my Windows desktop. Cant afford to uograde, but i do have quite a few 4GB and 400Mb HDD's arround the place :(
 
I adopted a practice that I now try and live by with everything I own, if I haven't used something (and I apply this to everything in my house and garage) in two years I sell it, give it away or throw it in the trash. My house is much cleaner and my life is clutter free.
 
Take them apart and make some kind of art out of the platters. I'm thinking about doing that with a few failed drives I have. Now that I think of it, I also have several ancient (but theoretically working) drives that could be candidates as well.

Or if you give them away, make sure you at least zero out the data in Disk Utility.
 
scottydawg said:
I adopted a practice that I now try and live by with everything I own, if I haven't used something (and I apply this to everything in my house and garage) in two years I sell it, give it away or throw it in the trash. My house is much cleaner and my life is clutter free.
Click to expand...
I read [about] a scientific study which showed that reducing clutter and organizing / cleaning a living space reduces depression and increases productivity.

I should start another thread about old coaxial, power and RCA cables.
 
bankshot said:
Take them apart and make some kind of art out of the platters. I'm thinking about doing that with a few failed drives I have. Now that I think of it, I also have several ancient (but theoretically working) drives that could be candidates as well.

Or if you give them away, make sure you at least zero out the data in Disk Utility.
Click to expand...

The small yet very powerful magnets are really fun to play with too ;)

Just don't use them on the refrigerator... You will be looking at your kids A+ graded test until you buy a new fridge :p

Also saving the PCB boards is a wise idea as some people's drives will fail and will usually work again with a PCB swap. I have 2 large drives in just that situation. I'm just waiting till I can find a donor LOL.
 
kirkbross said:
How many people here have become helpless HD pack rats? I can't bring myself to throw away my old, tiny-capacity hard drives and they litter my junk boxes everywhere.

I have a bunch of ATA66 drives -- 4GB, 20GB, 40GB and 60GB -- from a hundred years ago whose data are already doubled on one of my several 1TB drives. I want to crush them into powder when I see them littering my junk box, but I am overcome with admiration and awe. It's kind of like looking at a black widow in my garage: I know I have to kill it, but I hesitate because they are just so cool in that they pack so much power into such a small bite. Kind of like hard drives.

I successfully, so far, quit alcohol four years ago so why can't I quit useless hard drives?

Admitted I was powerless over drives; that my storage of storage had become unmanageable.
Click to expand...
4gb is small, if you collect jpgs. the others are small only if you have a lot of imgs or some vid. the 20,40, 60gb would be great in p3, athlon, g3, or g4.
definitely, you should wipe your forlorn drives and give them away. ime, psus and hds are the parts that die most often.

due to a higher ratio of bad psus, i have a few smaller hds. the largest is 17gb, but the smaller hds in some dead 90's computers i inherited are appropriate size, so the 17gb is spare. i also have a ~600mb and a ~200 or ~400mb from dead 486s circa 2000. (the hds were upgrades). i guess it's too late to liberate those to someone who needs them. :)
 
OrangeSVTguy said:
The small yet very powerful magnets are really fun to play with too ;)

Just don't use them on the refrigerator... You will be looking at your kids A+ graded test until you buy a new fridge :p
Click to expand...
how many pounds over what area? can you use the magnets as handles when you haul out the fridge? :)
OrangeSVTguy said:
Also saving the PCB boards is a wise idea as some people's drives will fail and will usually work again with a PCB swap. I have 2 large drives in just that situation. I'm just waiting till I can find a donor LOL.
Click to expand...
 
KítscheñÇinqµe said:
how many pounds over what area? can you use the magnets as handles when you haul out the fridge? :)
Click to expand...
Absolutely -- put one of these on each side and you're good to go... 760 lbs. pull force for each one.

...but don't get your hand caught between two of them because they would crush it into a thin film of meat paste.
 
kirkbross said:
Absolutely -- put one of these on each side and you're good to go... 760 lbs. pull force for each one.

...but don't get your hand caught between two of them because they would crush it into a thin film of meat paste.
Click to expand...
"The Return of Human Spam! You saw the prequel last summer! Now see a surgical pin sucked through car doors!"
4"d x2"... those must come out of a klunky hard drive :)
I was wondering if the magnets from dead (or "killed") drives could carry a fridge... or maybe a small antique typewriter. :)
 
kirkbross said:
Absolutely -- put one of these on each side and you're good to go... 760 lbs. pull force for each one.

...but don't get your hand caught between two of them because they would crush it into a thin film of meat paste.
Click to expand...

Heh! Those are the ones they used in Mythbusters when they used them to climb through the metal ductwork. He was able to stand on one that was stuck to the side and that's 200lbs+.
 
OrangeSVTguy said:
Heh! Those are the ones they used in Mythbusters when they used them to climb through the metal ductwork. He was able to stand on one that was stuck to the side and that's 200lbs+.
Click to expand...
Yup. I bought a couple of 1 inch cubes and while I was trying to pry them apart they snapped back together and pinched the side of my hand so hard that it created a massive blood blister the size of a dime. I eventually had to use vice grips to pry them apart and have been very respectful of their power ever since. I also have a few 1" cylinders and some smaller ones, but I'm afraid to buy anything much larger for fear of a serious accident.
 
I migrate my data to larger drives as they become available and ebay my smaller ones. Keeps my data "fresh" and saves on space. Right now I have a everything on 250's 320's and 500's mainly. I've moved some stuff to 750's and 1TB's, but I'll probably wait till we hit 2TB drives till my next big move. I keep all my data on a pair of drives just in case. So each drive has it's own copy.
 
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