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Hard Drive Window

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the because-you-shouldn't dept.

Xx Shinwa xX writes "This guy has done what was thought to be impossible: he has opened his hard drive and installed a clear acrylic window. And it still works. I would love to try this, if I had the guts."

12 of 380 comments (clear)

  1. Usefool by biocute · · Score: 5, Funny

    This guy deserves a usefool entry.

    One day I'll get around to making a window for my CDROM, so that I can see what's going on when there's no CD inside.

    --
    Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
    1. Re:Usefool by MarkGriz · · Score: 5, Funny

      "One day I'll get around to making a window for my CDROM, so that I can see what's going on when there's no CD inside."

      Excellent. Maybe this same technology can be applied to a refrigerator so we can see what happens when the door is closed.

      --
      Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
    2. Re:Usefool by cyberchondriac · · Score: 5, Funny

      The light is in a state of superposition:
      It is both on and off !

      Oh, it's a Quasar refrigerator ? I thought you said quantum !
      ;-)

      --

      Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
    3. Re:Usefool by Linker3000 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Eh, so someone installs Windows on his hard disk and it's news? Why no, I didn't RTFA

      --
      AT&ROFLMAO
  2. Yippy-Skippy. by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was impressed with this, until I read the following:
    This is the unmodified hard drive, a Western Digital 3 GB drive (Caviar 33100) made in 1997.
    I hate to be a buzzkill, but BFD. I regularly disassembled these drives for data recovery purposes back in the salad days, when I was a carefree computer repair technician. We had an excellent level of success with any drive smaller than 4 GB, and one 2 GB drive, on which I replaced the head assembly for data recovery purposes, happily ran for over two years after the surgery.

    I thought this mod was going to be performed on a contemporary drive, which would have been duly impressive. Heck...perform this mod successfully on a drive as big as 30 GB, and I'll tip my hat. But 3 GB? Sorry, but no.
    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    1. Re:Yippy-Skippy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      " This drive is BRAND NEW (still in the static wrap) sitting right next to me as I type this. Personally, I think the hardest part of this whole mod was gluing (Did I spell that right? lol.) the plexi back onto the drive cover."

      For you maybe, but I suspect the hardest part for most anyone else would be finding a friend stupid enough to ruin a brand new hard drive.

  3. People have done this for years!! by karlandtanya · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is news??

    --
    "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
    1. Re:People have done this for years!! by tgd · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, its not news, its one of four Slashdot front page stories copied from Digg.

      And like the last one (which I pointed out and got moderated as a troll), it wasn't one of the good ones.

      There are definitely better ones that could've gotten onto here for the sake of those who don't read both sites, there's some great scuba photography linked on there and a very funny 720p vs 1080i thing.

  4. Vacuum? by RedACE7500 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I thought the inside of a hard drive was a vacuum.. am I wrong?

  5. Re:Cool... but by danieljpost · · Score: 5, Funny

    Blue LED's hadn't been invented yet when this story was news.

    --
    We must drive a sword through any hypothesis that is not strictly necessary.
  6. I've run a naked drive for a week by yeremein · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was writing a disk imaging utility for my company and I had to deal with bad sectors properly. Couldn't find a drive with bad sectors so I decided to make one. I pulled the cover off an old hard drive and hooked it up to my machine, figuring the dust would cause bad sectors soon enough.

    The blasted thing ran just fine for a week.

    Eventually I tried writing on the platter with a dry-erase marker while it was spinning. That didn't even kill it. But a little scratch with a screwdriver killed it dead.

  7. No, see... by paranode · · Score: 5, Funny

    He installed Windows and it still worked.