Spinning rust

Ancient ones were aluminium alloy I think, but more modern ones are usually glass or some sort of ceramic. These can break and can leave sharp edges. BTDT.

They make excellent inspection mirrors!

(no idea...)

Thomas Prufer

Isn't it (now) chromium dioxide (as it went with tape) and why they are more often silver than brown?

Isn't the coating sprayed on when it's spinning (or am I thinking optical media)?

Cheers, T i m

yes, I've gathered a few, the 2 1/2" ones used to be glass, with the 3

I've kept the magnets when I've destroyed hard disks (with tin snips)

Very powerful and likely to give you a black blister if your finger is anywhere near when you mate them together :-(

I've always assumed that once the platter is removed from its mount, it's almost impossible to re-mount it and read the contents, as getting it properly re-aligned is very difficult.

I agree about the magnets. Very good for fixing reminders onto fridge doors etc. although I haven't actually found another use for them!

I remember them on the removable disk packs for the old 'Winchester' drives on Prime computers in the 1980's. But never come across one when stripping down any drives from PCs.

Don't forget that the heads are servo driven these days not steppers like they used to be. They are self tracking up to a point.

Depends how old it is and who made it. I understand some were very thin glass and then coated. Brian

With the right kit, and modern servo tracking its doable. Recovery specialists will sometimes need to move platters to a new mechanism.

Handy for wiping along a screwdriver for magnetising it.

The heads reading it were not traditional like floppies either the term hall effect comes to mind. Brian

No some of those removable oneswith hundreds of megs on were simply multi story floppies in a box.

I go back to those huge things with a big handle on the top under a perspex cover that could be changed. Life has come on a long way since Uncle Clive and his tape loop! Brian

Some of the fireball ones seemed to have optical bits and magnetic bits as I recall one supposes for indexing but these days its all a bit of ablack art. Brian

If I wipe the platter with one of the magnets I've extracted from the drive, will that effectively obliterate the contents. Just curious really, rather than being neurotically cautious (I can't see anyone getting hold of the platter, and if they did, would they have the kit to read it? I very much doubt it). Besides, I quite like it as a coaster!

I go back to the small ones with a big handle on top.

Ah, but people weren't typing memos in Word in those days :-0

Owain

Your local ploddery will have no difficulty with the range of equipment they have ot hand.

I'm about to donate a pair for someone who wishes to descale his water pipes (q.v.)

Which is a bloody nuisance when you're trying to put a tiny machine screw in place, as soon as the screwdriver is anywhere near it, the screw jumps out and attaches to the screwdriver but oriented in entirely the wrong direction.