Replying to How To Take Your Computer Hard Drive Apart

You can also make a cool disk sander/grinder from a hard drive if you wish.
It's relatively simple, you just need to supply +12V and +5V to the drive on the leftmost and the rightmost pins of the motor.
If anyone cares, I found an instructable of someone doing that.

that sounds pretty cool, don't put in too much voltage like someone did with a washing machine and then chuck and brick in, although it would be funny to make a catapult from a hard disk. is that possible using the same method as you use for creating a sander, i'd remove the magnet currentyl on it and then fit a electromagnet so you can turn it off and drop some object onto the thing and then lauch it. it makes me wonder what other possiblities there are for ol hard disks and mean you can use the magnets, make a sander even most liely some sort of lauhing system. i just thought ever been told to clean the windows then put a cleaning surface on the hard drive and it will be done quickly. want to wax the car then have no fear old hard drive is here.

You can also make a cool disk sander/grinder from a hard drive if you wish.
It's relatively simple, you just need to supply +12V and +5V to the drive on the leftmost and the rightmost pins of the motor.
If anyone cares, I found an instructable of someone doing that.

That has got to be one of the craziest things that I have ever seen and I have done some serious crazy/stupid things in my life!

Wow that's an interesting read I'll probably try it on one of my many dead harddrives. will report back when I get something done!

You can also make a cool disk sander/grinder from a hard drive if you wish.
It's relatively simple, you just need to supply +12V and +5V to the drive on the leftmost and the rightmost pins of the motor.
If anyone cares, I found an instructable of someone doing that.

Can you explain what you mean by the older platters being brownish?

This is a personal story which makes me wonder what you mean.
My question is how early were the brown platters? I still have one of those big hard drive platters at my mom's house and it isn't brown

You can see a brown disk at the rear part of this wikipedia image : http://translate.goo...U69Q0CX0wjPRChw
Or go to the english wikipedia main page and look for "Disk storage"
As you can see see, the disks are rather brown, with a very big hole (two or three inches hole) .Their color is due to the gamma-iron-dioxide. They were obtained by means of a layer of magnetic material, which was polished until becoming very thin. These disks were used until the years 80's.
The modern disks are done differently, starting from nothing on a very clean substrate, and then growing a thin iron layer, or chromium-cobalt or a iron-terbium-gadolinium layer.

Mirror-like disks? These are already new generation disks. The regular disks, made from gamma iron magnetic oxyde, were dark-brown.

Can you explain what you mean by the older platters being brownish?

This is a personal story which makes me wonder what you mean. When I was a child I used to walk to my grandparents house across the road. They were somewhat of packrats and had all kinds of weird things hung up all around their property. I remember always seeing this silver, flat disk about a foot in diameter, with an inch hole in it hanging on a barn wall. There wasn’t just one but many of them all over the place and they had been there for as long as I can remember. I must have been 8 or 9 at the time and asked my father what they were and he told me computer parts. Since this was the late 1980’s and I only recently learned what a computer was I thought this was really weird especially since my grandfather had nothing to do with computers and was essentially just a retired farmer.

Over the years I never asked any questions until I saw a picture of an early hard drive in college. It had huge platters and I instantly remembered the silver plate on the side of the barn. This is when everything snapped together. Over the years I remember my parents mentioning that my grandfather used to work at Sperry Corporation and he would always bring home damaged parts. I guess my father was right and it really was part of a computer.

My question is how early were the brown platters? I still have one of those big hard drive platters at my mom’s house and it isn’t brown but looks exactly like a modern silver hard drive but ten time bigger and thicker. I know it has to be from at least the late 1970’s if not earlier. Are you talking about the 1960’s era platters or something entirely different?

I've seen some old school hard drives that were the size of 1 foot square with many platters. It looked like an old phonograph with mirror like disks.

Mirror-like disks? These are already new generation disks. The regular disks, made from gamma iron magnetic oxyde, were dark-brown.

I've seen some old school hard drives that were the size of 1 foot square with many platters. It looked like an old phonograph with mirror like disks.

Maybe the topic title is not fully correct.
Usually, when people say "Hard drive", people mean the whole attachment, without unsealing the box.
Your topic seems devoted to explain how to remove the magnetic platter for teaching purposes. Of course, this completely destroys the disk.
The head flies at about 0.4 down to 0.2 micrometers above the platter ; at this distance, any dust will lead to a crash, exactly like an airplane touching an obstacle. Usually these operations are made in a dustless room in the factory.
Same thing if you remove the magnet, which is part of the actuator, all the initial position settings will be lost, the magnetic head will never be able to find it's navigating position.
So, the topic title should probably better be "How to break a used hard drive in order to see it's physical components".

I believe your concerns were addressed in the second paragraph, lol.

Warning! Taking the cover off of your hard drive will certainly void any warranty and will most certainly kill the drive. Common dust in the air can wreck the drive if it gets between the head and platter...

I've never had the chance to take the platters apart. The only time I really tried, the platters were made out of silicon and shattered almost instantly.

Aha, I knew I was wrong , I guess I'm too young to know

I think that 50 years ago disappeared the last players able to play the old 78 rpm platters. The standard players (before the CD players) had two speeds, and you had to manually choose the speed : 33 rpms if you wantet to play a so-called long-player plates, the wide ones, and choose 45 rpms for the small platters, the ones with a single song on each side And, yes, you had to manually swap the platter in order to ear the songs on the other side.