Come on guys this is stupidly dangerous, there is a good reason that those disks cut at high speed they store massive amounts of potential energy. More than a small calibre bullet in most cases. One of those platters shattering would make an awful mess of you. If that is not enough older drives have glass platters that is just asking for trouble, please don’t promote such dangerous things. Sometimes its worth spending a few dollars and buying real tools, this is one of those times.

Posted at 4:27 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by Alexander Gee

very nice, i like.

Posted at 4:31 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by mnelsen

i always thought hard drives had stepper motors in them? im sure you could modify the mounts on them to put an actual grinding disc instead of using the platter, and you could just make a cheap circuit to drive it at variable speeds.

Posted at 4:53 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by xrazorwirex

OOOOHHH! Sparks. I like this idea. Those drives have some serious rotational kinetic energy. I bet there are a lot of other things to do with them too.

Posted at 5:08 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by Max Witt

As someone who has worked in a machine shop, with a lot of experience operating grinders and chop-saws, I would hafta agree with Alexander here…its too much of a gray area to be playing with. HD platters were NOT designed to have ANY friction on them at all. You might get away with some very light sanding, but using it as a grinder is just asking for some metal shrapnel in places you don’t want it…

Posted at 5:10 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by DigitalKlepto

sure it’s dangerous, oh well :P

Posted at 6:01 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by josh

http://gfx.ibas.com/news/pictures/total_head_crash.jpg to see what just a head crash can do to a hard drive platter. If any of you have ever taken a hard drive apart, then you know how light and flimsy a head is. this picture is what a hard drive looks like with just a very small amount of pressure on it. you go ahead and try to sand or grind something with a hard drive platter…

Posted at 7:11 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by DigitalKlepto

@5: Modern drives don’t use stepper motors for head positioning anymore; they use voice coil type positioners instead.

Posted at 7:18 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by Orv

He was referring to the spindle motor, which is a stepper.

Posted at 10:08 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by Mosheen

Actually, spindles are (have always been?) driven by brushless motors, not steppers.

As for safety, all the HDDs I’ve taken apart seem at least as sturdy as the cheap “dremels” I’ve owned… Plus, along with the suggested epoxy, some kind of mesh or cloth could be sandwiched between the platters for even more strength.

A slightly safer use would be as a buffing/polishing wheel.

Posted at 10:28 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by Amos

great hack! Remember to wear those safety glasses.

Posted at 10:44 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by diy audio projects

What the hell has happened to hack-a-day?
Posting something like this is stupid. Especially when you don’t even bother to mention that this is extremely dangerous. There are still many drives that use metal plated glass platters… the energy in a spinning platter could cause it to literally explode when misused.
Something like this would not have been posted a year ago. Yes, it may have a cool factor but that is heavily outweighed but the maiming factor.
Stupid h-a-d… unbeliveably stupid post.

Posted at 10:52 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by Aaron

aaron …. i agree what the hell has happened to this site. but on the other hand its better than some of the shit that has been posted lately ( oink news )

dex

Posted at 1:22 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by dex

hi
> I Look up a set that can completly deletes the hard disks platter so that it dont possible recoverable.
> Do you have such this set?

Posted at 10:03 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by reza

@DigitalKlepto Read on, it talks about using a sheet of sand paper over the plates. The plates are just there for a surface, which seeing there brittleness Id probably opt for installing actual metal plates cute from sheet as opposed to glass….

Posted at 10:28 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by BlizzardDemon

I was wondering, there is a way to interface the spindle motor directly, maybe through a serial port?
Since it has already a mounting and some screws I think it’s easy to build something around it

Posted at 9:02 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by GnuoyKun

I was never as paranoid as you guys when attaching an orbital sander disk to the platterface of an obsolete drive, arcing off of old CRTs, launching ballistic CDs with a dremel, or any of the stupid dangerous crap hacks do involving high energies and computer hardware.

Man up you whinging HAD readers. If you die with a hard drive platter pinning your head to your workbench at least it will be an awesome death.

Posted at 1:28 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by Solenoidclock

“If you die with a hard drive platter pinning your head to your workbench at least it will be an awesome death”

All you “not a hack” whiners, *this* is what a HAD comment is *supposed* to look like.

Posted at 9:41 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by James

Funny you should mention, I never thought it could be dangerous when I made it. Anyway all the HDDs I’ve opened and destroyed have had metal platters and this was not different… Metal plated glass does indeed sound rather dangerous so that would have been a good thing to point out in the original article. Also the motor has virtually no torgue at all, so when a load is applied the speed drops well below the specified.

Funny this gets linked now, it’s already over two years old :)

Posted at 11:53 am on Jul 3rd, 2008 by Jipa

i´m trying to make the hd plattes spin with a 9v battery but with no success, i´m giving my first steps in circuit bending so i would really like to do this.. can someone give me a clue on how to achieve this?
thnx :)

Posted at 8:32 am on Jul 5th, 2008 by morin

This may not be so hot for sanding/grinding but as a lapping/polishing surface it seems to do the trick. hardly any load would be put on it (use properly) and the surfaces are smooth enough that a little diamantine & oil or water would work wonders on that last little bit of high polish wanted.

Just a thought.

Posted at 8:59 pm on Aug 23rd, 2008 by Kludge