Free hard drive

[Magnum]

If anyone has use of a 160 Gb IDE drive, you can have it free.

Just pay for shipping.

Andy

[KeepingRealBusy]

Around here they let you recycle your trash electronics for free, you just need to bring along your Water Bill.

OBTW, have you ever had any personal data on that drive? Be sure to securely erase the drive. For all of my old HD's, I usually use my 4.5 lb  Bammer - use a face shield to protect your eyes.

Dave.

[Magnum]

I may go this route.

http://www.wikihow.com/Recycle-Old-Computer-Hard-Drives

Andy

[Magnum]

I disassembled an old ide hard drive.

Supposed to contains some rare earth magnets.

There was nothing magnetic in it at all. :-)

Andy

[MichaelW]

All of the drives that I have disassembled over the last 15 years or so had voice-coil servo motors to position the head, with the voice coil operating in a magnetic field created by a thin rare-earth magnet. The magnet had an annular-sector shape, with steel plates top and bottom, joined at the outside of the annulus to form a magnetic circuit. At least most of the drives had screws to join the top and bottom plates, and by removing these I could get to the magnet, bonded to one of the steel plates.

[dedndave]

probably "mu-metal" plates   ;)

[MichaelW]

probably "mu-metal" plates   ;)

I have doubts. The magnet is positioned away from the disks, and IIRC the plates are not in a position or orientation where they could effectively shield the disk from the magnetic field, because the air gap is more or less on the disk side of the magnetic circuit. In the age of extremely powerful permanent magnets, why go to the considerable extra expense of using Mu-metal for a magnetic circuit when you can use low-carbon steel.