Today I was bored so I rummaged around and found a very old and tired 40Mb hard drive (yes that is Mb) and a dead apple mouse. So I took them out to my dads workshop and began prying away. The apple mouse was a huge pan to get open but eventually after literally tearing out the plastic logo bit I could pop out the circuitry and get the acrylic scoop I wanted. What I'll do with it I don't know but I has some good potential for a case mod or another mouse. The hard drive was pretty straight foward, I just unscrewed everything and then took a utility knife to the rubber seam. The payoff was pretty cool though, I'm still amazed at how complicated those things are, who would have ever thought anything like that would actually do anything, it just blows my mind. Anyway, here're the old relics:
That HDD must weigh a fair bit? I remember having a 500Mb HDD and it wieghed alot! You know you can make that old HDD into a HDD LED so to speak! (so when your HDD LED flashes the arms on the drive move backwards and forwards!) I will try and find the website i saw it on and post back with the info! Those old parts have alot of mod potential, on my old case i made a 486 CPU into the power button
what's cool is if you've got that hard drive, and the motor still spins you can just plug it in, there's a mod. Also that LED drive arm mod is cool to do also, looks really cool when done.
Yeah that thing was a beast, way heavier than todays HD's and sooo much more capacity, pretty crazy 40Mb was ever enough. Thanks for the mod tips but I'm thinking this drive is dead, the circuit board lying beside it attached to the bottom so I doubt I'd get it all back together again, I was just curious to see the innards. I may try anyway.
Hehe i did that with a 3GB HD that died, i took the screws out, but something was still keeping the cover on, then after an age looking to see what is keeping it on i took a sticker "Removing this sticker will void all warranty" and hey, there was the final screw under there. It looked cool with a shiny pilver platter and heads only 20nm away from the surface of it.
yeah the old ones are a bit hefty, i've seen that hard drive mod before: http://www.bp6.com/board/kb.php?mode=article&k=13 there's one site with a clear hard drive http://www.coolercases.co.uk/ricshdd.htm there's the one with the LED i found
Well those mods get Ex's seal of approval for sure! Sweet stuff, thanks Matt, shame I'm too much of a newbie to attempt any of this
yeah i wouldn't dare do it with a large expensive drive, unless i was uber rich...imagin that mod (actually working and not wrecking HDD) on a WD Raptor even better, 2 in raid), now that would give you bragging rights over modders...but i think you could take it step further, run the cable from the HDD LED connector on your motherboard to it, that way when the HDD is accessing something the light will flash...INSIDE THE HDD now that would be sweet!! (you could just split the cables into 2 for 2 drives)
Now that would be a VERY cool mod, difficult but I'm sure it's possible. The only downside is lights, of any kind, do get a bit old after awhile, flashing or otherwise.
yeah i suppose, but if you didnt want it anymore you could disconnect the cable...but i do remember old hard-drives, and they do weigh a fair bit. I remember my friend found an old external hard drive he got for his mac, this thing was huge! and it weighed so much as well...he remembered when he got it it was an amazing thing it was 400MB and this thing was about 12"x6"x6" and was an amazing sized hard drive, now you can get more storage on your fingertip...
