hard drive without casing - dangerous?

Kotu · 24 Sep 2009 at 21:35

This might seem like quite an odd question, but i don't want to end up seriously injuring myself by accident. Basically, I have an ancient 120GB IBM deskstar which just happened to get the click of death sound an hour after I backed everything up off it. So ive decided I want to experiment with it a little to see why it seems to be stuck. I've managed to get the shield off the drive and i've tried plugging it in, but it started to get pretty noisy. It then struck me, this thing will get up to 7000+ rpm, if the disks are not secure they could be quite nasty if they decided to "come loose".

So whats the opinion here, is an open hard drive being powered up dangerous at all?

Makhaira · 24 Sep 2009 at 21:36

Hmm, I'm not sure.

I suppose if you're still posting tomorrow at least I'll know it's safe for future reference

.

LeJosh · 24 Sep 2009 at 21:42

If a platter comes loose and flies off... I don't know how secure they are but at 7k rpm I wouldn't do it.

mod1fied · 24 Sep 2009 at 21:50

This guy doesn't seem to mind it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK1RR7Bhd-s

Kotu · 24 Sep 2009 at 22:00

hmm, looking at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMmiqS8gKu8&NR=1 I think its probably pretty safe

AbsenceJam · 24 Sep 2009 at 23:00

Exposing the platters will have done for your data.

bledd · 25 Sep 2009 at 13:20

I wouldn't risk it, the last thing you need is a hard drive needle in your eye

Psy-Blade · 25 Sep 2009 at 13:59

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I saw some guy build a clock out a running drive. Maybe one of you guys linked to it above I can't check I'm here via RDP

.

I wouldn't want to have a disk or a piece of a platter hit me at 7200rpm! I'd say it's probably not the best idea however it did give me an idea...

How cool would a window mounted disk look in a case, showing the platters spinning etc. Not being used obviously, but just there for show. Maybe an app to make the heads move around too haha.

DigitalReaper · 25 Sep 2009 at 14:36

Psy-Blade said:
How cool would a window mounted disk look in a case, showing the platters spinning etc. Not being used obviously, but just there for show. Maybe an app to make the heads move around too haha.

It's been done, supposedly 40GB is the limit to still have the drive working afterwards. You can also pick up a raptor X drive, just a normal raptor but with a window factory installed. They were 150GB drives IIRC.

Coldzero · 25 Sep 2009 at 14:58

Exposing it doesn't do it any good at all, but its not 'dangerous' as far as im aware.

rpstewart · 25 Sep 2009 at 15:14

Indeed. I remember talking to a guy who was doing demos of IBM's laptop HDD protection system - the one which parks the disk if it detects the laptop being dropped. He had to take a box of disks with him because he could only run each disk exposed for a few minutes before it died.

Guest2 · 25 Sep 2009 at 16:43

Itll be fine. If not turn it into that weapon that was on the game Unreal that threw disks out to chop things up