What Can I Do with a Dead Hard Drive? [Ask Lifehacker]

Dear Lifehacker,
I have a dead hard drive that is out of warranty. Is there anything I can do besides recycle it?

Signed,
All My Drives are Down 'n Dead

Photo by ArtMast.

Dear Down 'n Dead,
You're in luck. While your hard drive may be dead to its original function you can harvest parts from it for all sorts of fun and interesting DIY projects.

Before we delve into gutting your hard drive and repurposing its guts, let's talk data security. While you didn't specify what "dead hard drive" means, we'll assume this means the disk is inoperable and any means of recovering the disk for use using software have failed. If the disk has truly sensitive data on it—data worth enough that someone would invest significant time and energy

in recovering it—the only safe thing to do is to reference the Symphony of Destruction portion of our guide to properly erasing your physical media. If, on the other hand, the disk was mostly populated with your bootleg Bon Jovi concert rips, it's ripe for all manner of DIY projects.

We've roughly ordered the following projects by the amount of effort and technical knowledge required to carry them out. At the start of the list you'll need little more than basic tools and some patience. By the end of the list you'll need to be comfortable with a soldering iron and working with electronics.

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