Harddrive Speakers

paranoidia writes "Ever get annoyed by the loud noise your harddrive makes? I bet you never thought of actually using that to your advantage. A friend here at CMU actually took 3 broken hard drives and got them to spin at certain frequencies outputed by his computer. So in the end, three harddrives are actually now speakers! There are videos and a few pictures with explanations onto how he did this wonderous thing."

Comments

Re:dunno, most of my drives are pretty quiet

[GigsVT]

There's a trade off there between seek time and noise. Maxtor acutally has acoustic management utilities where you can choose faster seeks or quieter operation.

Re:Hard drive noises

[GigsVT]

On a similar note, I have an old 10Base-T hub, one of the old metal wall-mount kinds, and if you power it from a 9 volt power supply rather than a 7.5, it actually hisses! It doesn't overheat or anything, I can only think it must be an inductor or something that vibrates in a certain way to make the hissing noise.

We also had a cisco hub at work that does the same thing on it's rated voltage. That one also got really hot though.

Re:Of course...

[Doppleganger]

That's why recovery companies open drives in a dust-free environment with hazmat suits on

Well, naturally, that's what they say is the reason. After all, if everyone in the world knew that deadly chemicals were contained in hard drive platters, no one would ever touch a computer again! Don't tell me you actually believe them?!?

Re:What drive noise?

[GigsVT]

Maxtor drives are always very quiet. They have an acoustic management utility you can use to either make them seek faster or be quieter. Even with fast seeks on, they are still very quiet. Maxtor is quickly becoming the best hard disk manufacturer. Their drives are also very reliable and they are the technology leader with the largest dis(c)ks.