[OT] Cold, Dead Hard drives (was: Encrypted Swap)

[Stephen Satchell <satch@fluent-access.com>]

At 03:59 AM 8/8/01 +1200, Chris Wedgwood wrote:
>I'm told people do actually buy dead hard-drives that are returned for
>RMA purposes.  I wonder that they do with them? :)

The obvious answer:  take five drives and find parts for a good drive, and 
resell the drive as a refurb.

Not-so-obvious answer:  Take the dead drive as-is, package with Microsoft 
Operating System of your choice, and then auction the bundle on 
eBay.  (Dead motherboards are good for this, too.)  This is to satisfy an 
asinine rule that someone at Microsoft cooked up.

Most bogus answer:  Dump them off the coast of Florida and make an 
artificial reef.  This is what Core International, a hard drive 
distributor, claimed it was doing with trade-ins during an '80s promotion 
for drives to replace the infamous CMI 20 hard drive that IBM was shipping 
in its IBM PC AT (you know, that blazing 6-MHz 286 system that was supposed 
to revolutionize the Charlie Chaplan office environment).

Most useful answer:  Disassemble drive.  Use head field magnets on the 
fridge.  Use platters as coasters (I have a set of coated ones from a dead 
drive, and uncoated ones rejected during manufacturing that Micronet 
Technologies gave away as party favors one year).

And THAT should close this branch of the thread tree nicely...

Satch