Hard Drive Magnets

[brianhabby]

Browsing YouTube the other day I stumbled across a guy who was stripping old hard drives to get at the various components, including some neodymium (rare earth) magnets. I've had some old drives knocking about for ages waiting to decide how best to dispose of them so now I've got a pile of useful magnets for free.

Anyone else tried this?

regards

Brian

 

[CHJ]

Yes they are distributed around my machines and hold Allen keys, chuck keys, spanners etc. regularly needed on that machine.

Even buried them in wood projects to close lids, hold cheese knives etc.

 

[Tom K]

Yeah I have my grass shears and a machete held to the shed wall for years this way. (hammer)

 

[Noel]

Very handy items. Have them buried on feather boards on most machines.

 

[Tom K]

You don't need a machete on every machine Noel one by the door is plenty for almost any eventuality. (homer)

 

[cambournepete]

I've done the same - they can hold surprisingly heavy items.

 

[Racers]

Hi, Chaps

Yep, got loads my self.

We used to leave them near peoples CRT monitors just for fun!!!

Pete

 

[chippy1970]

Yeah I've removed them from hard drives before, I made the mistake of holding two in my hand once they slam together and give you a nasty pinch if you're not careful

Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk 2

 

[Eric The Viking]

If you ever see a 5.25" drive, especially an HP one (they're ancient - HP got out of the business in the late 1990s), those magnets are huge and very, very strong. I keep mine on the office radiator, always separated from it by a business card. I had a friend who worked for HP's disk division who cut himself quite nastily on a finger when it got in the way of two of those magnets coming together.

I use mine for welding, and for cleaning up swarf from the bench and floor: you can get small but quite thick polythene bags for the freezer, and the ones hardware comes in are sometimes OK. Put magnet in bag. Pick up swarf on outside. Turn bag inside out, carefully, and throw away. It needs to be thick as grinder swarf is like needles and will go straight through a thin bag.

You can sometimes separate them from the soft iron part with a mallet and a hardwood wedge. It's worth it, because you get two parallel flat poles, and you can stick right-angled triangles to them, which is ideal for alignment when you're welding.

If anyone has an old magneto-optical drive knocking about (the ones taking a CD-sized disc in a shuttered cartridge) they have incredibly powerful, very small magnets in them, in the head assembly. The disc surface was heated by a laser, then the magnet changed the optical polarity. It had to do this very fast, hence enormous strength. I'm not sure what they're made from though. They're cigar shaped and about 5/8" long, and the poles are weirdly on the sides of the things.

Tape drive motors also have very powerful magnets in them, too.

 

[Noel]

You don't need a machete on every machine Noel one by the door is plenty for almost any eventuality. (homer)

LOL.