Spinning rust

[T i m]

<snip>

I always think it's a terrible waste of a (useable size / interface) drive to destroy it, even if there is stuff on there you might not want read by the casual interested tech (even, let alone a straight user). [1]

ITRW, a good dose of DBAN and an install if Linux or somesuch is good enough to do all that's required and you still have something useable.

Even if you don't want it, you might find they are still used in other kit and people will pay good beer tokens for it. (I sold a small batch of old SCSI drives that way).

You can buy coasters very cheaply and they don't have a big hole in the middle. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[1] A mate, thinking he was doing the right thing, took the drive out of one of the old PC's I had built him and tried to burn it (in a bonfire with other stuff) but it didn't burn very well (surprise surprise). Not long after he needed a new drive himself and had to buy one (and the one he burnt was perfectly suitable). That's what happens when people who don't know get advise from people who know even less (as I think he did in this case). ;-(

[Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downst]

Polo - the mint with the less fattening centre.

And why does puss always go to the bowl with Jellymeat Whiskas? ...

... because he doesn't like iron filings and sawdust.

Mummy, why are your hands so soft? ...

... because Daddy does the washing up.

And the best advert skit?

What has a hazelnut in every bite? ...

... squirrel shit!

[Max Demian]

"'Cos I'm twelve. Now shut up and eat your chips."

[blatha]

I'm not actually stupid enough to do reminders that primitively.

I have, and even bought some off aliexpress for peanuts but now can't remember what I needed them for.

I find the Arlo cameras and Hue movement sensors which have very strong magnets on the back of them very handy when mounting them.

[Roger Breedle]

They use bits of Scotch tape:

A platter swop from start to finish.

[Marland]

I was given a set of metal lockers like those found in work places or changing rooms to place clothing or other personal items in, no keys came with them and this particular variety had no separate latch so depended on a key to turn the one on each door . About the same time I was given some magnets from drives , the crescent moon shape meant that positioned in the right place each magnet could prevent two doors from swinging open . Turning it clock wise allowed clearance for the lower door to be opened and turning it anti-clock wise the same for the door above it. Did service for some ten years before we got something better.

GH

[Chris Hogg]

I would not normally destroy of a useable drive (I have two in my computer-bits box in the loft). But this one was dead, or at least, I couldn't get any life out of it, so I felt quite justified in dismantling it, just in case someone else could get it to work, and I still have two others that do work.

[T i m]

That's fair enough then (as considered previously) ... I have done the same with failed / failing / very small capacity / noisy drives when having a thin out. ;-)

I wonder if anyone would try / bother to run up a small capacity drive, even if it turned up in India?

To other boxes of them you mean don't you? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Bob Eager]

We weren't typing anythimg except programs!

[dennis]

How small I have windows running on a laptop with a 40G drive in it. I would fit an SSD but its IDE.

I also have a cheap tablet running win10 on 32G but its not a hard drive.

[dennis]

I saw a small drum drive that was in use about a year before I started working on SystemX. The capacity was measured in instructions it could hold (not many but maybe a thousandish). The real skill was getting the next instruction that you wanted to be under the heads (lots of them, one instructions worth) just when you needed to read it for execution) no RAM for programs AFIK).

[T i m]

<snip>

Wasn't that what the likes of Optune (+ Spinrite?) did, tweak the sector interleave ratio to optimise the latency?

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

Whilst that is small, as you say, could still be considered useable, especially on a DOS box. ;-)

I think they do (or did) IDE SSD's?

I have similar here (Fujitsu PC tablet of some sort).

Cheers, T i m

[tabbypurr]

I suspect some govt agency has developed a universal reader. The tech isn't that hard. Your data may be easy pickings.

and for picking up things dropped out of reach.

NT

[dennis]

What sectors? We are talking about stuff that predated disks. You measured the rotation speed in cpu instruction and it wasn't many.

[dennis]

They cost a lot per byte.

They do adapters from IDE to M.2 SSDs but I can't find anywhere that explicitly states you can boot from one.

As the laptop only has a centrino CPU I think it might be a waste.

I only fixed it because its another one with a wacom digitizer built in. Its an HP but nowhere as powerful at the Thinkpad yoga S1 I fixed a couple of weeks ago.

Atom processors with 2G of RAM and 32G of storage run win10 quite well.

If I can get a free upgrade I will put win10 on the HP and see if its better, it should be more responsive as win10 takes less resources than win7 and far less than the XP tablet edition that was on it.

[T i m]

'Like ...'

I know.

;-)

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

<snip>

Agreed, for a given value of 'well' etc. ;-)

The biggest stumbling block I have found doing that sort of thing is how much (little) RAM XP will run (or even install) in compared with anything later (even Linux).

Cheers, T i m

[John Rumm]

If your day job is bank account raiding, ID theft etc, then it seems like too good an opportunity to miss!

[John Rumm]

You are doing it wrong then, that is precisely the time the magnetised driver is ideal. Put the screw on the end of the driver, then offer it into the hole.