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How to Build a Hard Drive Wind Chime For Spring

tyrani writes "Spring is just around the corner and the front of the house isn't going to decorate itself. Build a Hard Drive Wind Chime and show your neighbors what a cool geek you really are." He's honest, too. From the article: "Many people linking this page on their blogs claim that this is a secure way of destroying your hard drive and its sensitive data. It is not completely true! The platters are never used in this HOWTO and could potentially be stolen by ninjas while you're making a wind chime and the data recovered by ninja-hackers."

38 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Rarr by Tobias.Davis · · Score: 3, Funny

    I built a shank out of my hard drive, with the head sensor assembly. It's hard to smuggle into jail.

  2. No by Quasar1999 · · Score: 5, Funny

    This story is mis-titled... it should be how to keep your g/f occuppied... by letting her make windchimes... all the while, you go out and buy new hardware for yourself... ;)

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    1. Re:No by rob_squared · · Score: 3, Funny
      There's a joke in here somewhere; "girlfriend", "hard-drive", "wind blowing."


      Nope, got me, I can't think of anything.

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    2. Re:No by MiKM · · Score: 2

      Slashdotters have girlfriends!?

    3. Re:No by hammurderer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well there is one good advantage to taking apart the hdd if you have never done it. the magnets are quite strong strong enough to remove the security on most items at best buy and circuit city. Its does take a bit of practice but once you get it you will be able to remove the security pretty quickly. I recommend using both of the magnets on top of eachother tends to work better. WARNING this will only work on physical security I.E. Boxes and Spider wraps. the magnets will not work on soft tags or stickers because those are deactivated using a rf frequency. how do I know this? Well I work at circuit city and have tried to unlock the boxes and It worked. So happy hunting and dont get caught!

  3. Allow me to be the first... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...to say that this is probably the lamest "hack" ever.

    It doesn't have anything to do with harddrives, might as well have been an engine, mix master, or VCR. All he did was to string up a couple of shiny parts.

    1. Re:Allow me to be the first... by FireFury03 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Don't the platters rust?

  4. Wind chimes are the tool of the devil by Neil+Blender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not really, but they should be banned. No one wants to hear your windchime at 2am, least of all me. I have actually gone to a few nearby windchimes in the middle of the night and tied them together with fishing line to shut them the hell up.

    1. Re:Wind chimes are the tool of the devil by B3ryllium · · Score: 4, Funny

      Uh, are you a ninja?

    2. Re:Wind chimes are the tool of the devil by krbvroc1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      No one wants to hear your windchime at 2am, least of all me.

      Not only that, but this article should have been filed under YRO.

  5. So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    would doing this void the warranty of my HD?

  6. I'm a bad person. by Capt'n+Hector · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My neighbor had a wind chime. It got to the point where I couldn't stand it anymore, so I waited until they were gone, stole it, and threw it in the garbage. Wind chimes are loud, annoying, repetitive, and no, I'm not a grumpy old man.

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    1. Re:I'm a bad person. by winterlens · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Did you ask them to pull it down, by any chance? Neighbors occasionally accommodate.

  7. Already by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh yeah? Mine started making those noises already while *still* in the PC!......oh shit

  8. Didn't have to be a hard drive.. by prakslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The so-called hack does not really use anything that is unique to a hard drive. He just cannibalized one to get some metal rings and some shiny metal thingies to hang them from.

    Could have used a VCR, a CD player or even a bike!

    A little lame.

  9. wind chimes are the devil by PortWineBoy · · Score: 5, Funny
    I hate them.

    I've found that cutting the string that supports the ball or disk in the center is the best method for dealing with them. The neighbor generally doesn't notice anything different for quite some time and when they do, they are usually stymied as to how to fix it.

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    1. Re:wind chimes are the devil by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 5, Funny

      Cops.

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      Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  10. That's great but... by eomnimedia · · Score: 5, Funny

    The ULTIMATE hack would be to build a hard drive from a wind chime.

    1. Re:That's great but... by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Funny

      The ULTIMATE hack would be to build a hard drive from a wind chime.

      You have to go to Soviet Russia for that.

      Actually I made one once, but it only stored 2 bits.

    2. Re:That's great but... by DigitalHammer · · Score: 2, Funny

      Howbout a hardchime from a wind-drive? ;)

  11. Ninjas!! by PolyDwarf · · Score: 2, Funny

    Now, finally... We've truely learned what the ninja's Real Ultimate Power is!

  12. Too funny by billsoxs · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just think what you could do with some mini HDs A couple of 40 G iPods? - think of the music then!

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  13. In other useful advises... by SlashThat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Make Scrabble out of your old keyboard!

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    1's and 0's should be free.
  14. Finally by lbmouse · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is why I loved slashdot. Thank you Zonk and tyrani for showing the spirit of what geekdom is all about. A story with no political bullshit, no anti-corporate rhetoric, no M$ bashing. Just good-clean fun with IT stuff. BTW OT - Has anyone else seen the drives on TG?

    1. Re:Finally by theparanoidcynic · · Score: 2, Funny

      Fuck the wind chime lobby! They probably voted for Bush, shop at Wal-Mart, and run Windows!

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  15. Oblig... by n0dalus · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope the site isn't hosted using one of those hard drives.

  16. Mac Artists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    if you owned a mac, this might be a viable art endeavor.... artists they are.

  17. Pentium earrings by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought to myself, what a dumb story. Maybe I'll post a story on Pentium earrings. On a whim I did a search. The moral is: no matter how dumb you think your idea is, someone has actually done it before you.

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    1. Re:Pentium earrings by graffix_jones · · Score: 2, Funny

      The best part is the Pentium Earrings are listed under "Miscellaneous Antiques".

  18. Copyright Infingement evasion tactic by microbrewer · · Score: 2, Funny

    A little project to do when the MPAA and RIAA contracted DOJ and FBI goons are about raid your house for widescale copyright infingement they will probaly walk right past your creative little windchimes full of copyrighted material.

  19. Ninja-hackers? by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 2, Funny

    "...and the data recovered by ninja-hackers."

    Exactly how does one hack a ninja? Is it like hacking an Aibo, only more silent and deadly? Sounds fun, anyway...

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  20. Uhhh. I submitted this story on WEDNESDAY by windowpain · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Turn Your Old Hard Drive into a Windchime. Wednesday February 23, @10:39AM
    Rejected

    And I even included a link to another page on the subject

    WTF?

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  21. Be carefull... by slacktide · · Score: 2, Informative

    Many HD platters these days are not metal, but glass. Found out the hard way when I tried to bend a busted DeskStar platter and it shattered into a billion tiny pieces, and cut up my hand.

  22. Promoting Magnet Ignorance by Anemophilous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
    From the article:
    Note that the magnet is extremely strong. Keep it away from other electronics and metal. Don't hurt yourself. Seriously, do not understand these magnets!
    Really, trust me, you do not want to understand these things. If you understand a magnet, your head might explode. Please, put it down. Leave the magnet understanding to those who can handle it.

    - AC
  23. Quicker method by isny · · Score: 2, Funny

    Here is my quick method for doing the same thing:
    1. Drill hole in hard drive
    2. Attach string
    Of course, these don't make the nice ringing sound of a wind chime, they tend to clunk together.
    Here's another method:
    1. Duct tape hard drive to tree.
    If you do enough of these, is it a RAID wind chime?

  24. I've done this... by mako1138 · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... and the problem is that since it's the same rings, there's no variety in the noise made, which is a necessity in a wind chime. You can use the platters too, but then things tend to get tangled, if you hang from the spindle.

  25. Destroying harddrives by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Just out of curiosity, and yes, this is somewhat on-topic, how useful is arts and crafts for getting rid of old harddrives?

    I mean, lets say I theoretically have an old harddrive with information on it that I absolutely want permanently destroyed. Whats the best way to do it on the cheap for a college student? I don't have access to acid or anything else like that.

    I don't want to just throw it out because god knows who could find it, so I've wondered about turning it into art that nobody would find suspicious.

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  26. Hard Drive Coasters by Broofa · · Score: 2, Informative

    Cool! It's always fun to see hardware reuse. I made myself a set of drink coasters from and old NeXT cube hard drive