What To Do With a Dead Hard Drive?

For anyone how has used a computer long enough you eventually will encounter the nightmare that can be a corrupted or even a dead hard drive. If you are lucky, you have been keeping up with your data back-ups and will be up and running in no time—back-up philosophy and details is a post for another time.
Now, what to do with the dead hard drive? One thing I have seen for years online is people turning their old drives into desk clocks, and recently when I got my hands on some old hard drives I thought it was the perfect opportunity to build one.
Searching on-line you can find dozens of sites with instructions to guide you while building the clock. I used the site instructables which has a wide variety of designs and complexity of projects to choose. I used tips and details from several of the projects to build my clock.

Computer Nerd Coaster. 

You will need some tools that you may not have lying around the house, mainly a set of Torx screwdriversu have the right tools the hard drives disassemble easily, take your time though, there are a lot of small screws and parts that can be easily lost.
The most difficult step will be taking the motor and spindle that the platters spin on, they are fitted tightly together, and if you get too aggressive, you will gouge and ruin the soft metal of the spindle. If this happens all is not lost you can then make my other project from the weekend—The Computer Nerd Drink Coaster. The last tip is not to buy your clock mechanism until after you remove the platters and you can see how tall the stack is, and then buy a clock with correct spindle height. , which you can find at your local hardware store for a reasonable price, and is not a bad investment to make in our increasing computer based lives. Once yo The desk clock is a fun project and nice way to kill some down time when you have it.