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What To Do With a Hundred Hard Drives?
Makoto916 writes "In five years with my current employer as the IT administrator, I've amassed a sizable cabinet of discarded hard drives; just shy of 100, in fact. All of the drives range in size from 20GB up to 300GB. They've all been stored in anti-stat bags, and spot checks of even the oldest ones show that most of them still work. Individually, they're mostly useless for our line of work, which is digital video production. However, the collective storage potential is quite significant. They are of varying size and speed, but the one commonality is they're all IDE. What is the best way to approach connecting all of these devices and realizing their storage potential? On a budget, of course. Now, I'd never use such an array for critical data storage, but it certainly would be useful as a massive backup array to our existing SAN that does store critical data. I have several spare and functioning PCs, but not nearly enough to utilize their internal IDE controllers; even with multiple add-in controllers, it still wouldn't be enough. Not to mention the nightmare of managing a bunch of independent PCs. I've looked into ATA Over Ethernet and there's a lot of potential there, but current 15 to 20 bay AoE cabinets are expensive, and single device enclosures are so rare that they're also expensive. Are there any hardware hackers out there who have crafted their own home-brew AoE systems? Could they scale to 100 drives? Is there a better way?"
spin around in a circle and see who can throw them the greatest distance
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
But d0000000d, yer missing the point. He wants to do something 1337 hAxXoRz with all these drives. I mean, really, selling them on eBay would be what the n0rmLz would do.
Pry them open, remove those awesomely strong magnets, and stick them all over some douchebag's Hummer.
A hundred old hard drives stood up on a wall!
A hundred old drives on a wall!
BANG!
Ninety-nine old hard drives....
I think this is how Google started. Throw in some other random hardware and wait for the VC to come rolling in!
power_to_run_100_hard_drives = 100 * power_to_run_1_hard_drive
Who has time to do that on almost 100 drives?
People that don't actually stare at the screen the entire time a disk is being wiped.> Now, I'd never use such an array for critical data storage,
Why not - Google do for GFS. Indeed, I worked for a search engine company and wrote something that had significant similarities to GFS - that is, a distributed high-performance redundant file system. Of course, you still need a machine for every 4 drives, but it can be done. Still requires manual maintenance however - the chance of individual drive failure if you run lots of them becomes quite high (your data is safe due to redundancy). Look around the net for references to GFS and Google data centers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90jOYSfqG9I
Porn backup.
Lord of the Rings cosplay pron. If you haven't seen 'Shire Backdoor Freaks', you don't know what you're missing!
Two solution:
* Wipe the drives then donate them to charity. Plan on a few hours per 10 GB for a good wipe.
* Physically destroy the drive then have fun with the pieces. Unless you are going to destroy the platters completely I recommend at least a 1-pass 0-overwrite.
Ways to have fun physically destroying the drive:
* Heat: Thermite never looked so cool!
* Chemistry: What happens when iron mixes with NODON'TDOTHATYOU'LLBLOWITUP
* Physics: Hey kids, let's see what sandpaper does to metal!
As for the pieces, you can do arts and crafts, have cow-chipping, er, I mean drive-tossing contests, use them as props in the next company improvised-comedy day, or whatever.
When you are done, you can sell the metal for scrap.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why, an intern of course!
Will they blend?
Yeah, at least it's not like the Windows 98 defrag utility, where you could stare for hours until you realized you've been doing nothing but staring at the screen the whole time.
Time well wasted, I guess...
...turn the lot into a bulky and noisy 1 kW room heater. Remember to have an air gap between all drives to allow for air circulation.
1 kW may not be enough to keep you warm during winter, but it may help you survive if every other heat source fails.
Now you can install Vista and actually run it.
Impossible.
Just because you don't grasp physics doesn't make it go away.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Are you crazy?? You need to dedicate at least two, redundant backups, and off-site tape storage for that...
That's like putting all your savings under a mattress -- you won't need to use it until one day, you get really desperate, but realize it's all gone
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
I think the sledge would end up taking longer. This is slashdot, he would need a breather every 15 seconds.
Fill them with contraband media of various types and give them out to your users (and lusers). You could systematize it. If someone goes six months without "breaking" their computer by changing the settings, not liking it, and forgetting how to change them back, that person might get a 4-gig full of random music that you pulled off of Gnutella (or whatever). If a user goes a year without unintentionally creating a security risk, he gets 50 GB of unsorted porn. For the god of a man who has gone his entire career without a trouble ticket and is miraculously using ten-year-old hardware with no failures, you could have a 300 GB drive with all of the best video games, modern and classic.
And for the jackass who wants a new monitor because he changed the display resolution, tries out script-kiddie hacking tutorials on his coworkers, constantly demands faster equipment for him to do nothing with, looks at thumb drives he found in the parking lot, and gives up his password for a candy bar, you could stealthily replace his hard drive with a very small one containing Windows ME.
This space reserved for administrative use.
Or he could go the lazy way: take them down to your local computer mega-store and look for the DriveStar machine. Dump them in, the machine counts the space, and gives you back a few large-capacity drives (minus 8% for their profit, of course).
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of sectors suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
"Ubuntu" is an African word meaning "Slackware is too hard for me" lol
'sometime the moron called himself as idiot'
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I would second that, except that instead of that, you should pass it out to friends. In fact, I suggest putting them all on a big shelf on your wall.
You can have friends come over, and starting with 100 harddrives, just take one down, pass it around, and before too long you'll have 99 harddrives on the wall.
Why does this sound familiar? Hmm...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Or if he's lucky, he'll get super powers. It's gotta happen eventually, right?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Sure I do. It's sitting in my closet on top of my copy of Duke Nukem Forever.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey