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Christmas Tree Made From 70 SCSI Hard Drives
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Dec 17, 2008 12:39 PM
from the free-time dept.
from the free-time dept.
Trigger writes "At our work we were decomissioning six old HP/Compaq servers to clear up space for new servers and, naturally, each server had a fairly large raid array.
Instead of formatting every hard drive (would have taken weeks performing a DoD level wipe) and disposing them all together with the servers, I decided to disassemble the hard drives and recycle them into something neat.
With a lot (a lot) of patience, I made this shiny Xmas tree.
In total there are around 70 old SCSI hard drives, between 9gb and 18gb in size each. They were nice and chunky, oldschool style. There were quite a few different hard drive models, which is good because they each had different bits which I could use. The Xmas tree is made with parts from hard drives only except for one nut which I had to purchase for $0.39." It's good to see that this guy has plenty to do at work.
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Submission: Christmas tree made from 70 SCSI hard drives by Anonymous Coward
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Had to - (Score:5, Funny)
What are the plans after the tree is dismanteled (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:5, Funny)
Only if you have root access.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:5, Funny)
Redundancy, redundancy, how you protect your d444-t3rz!
Parent
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:5, Funny)
I guess you would at least have access to some logs ...
Parent
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:5, Funny)
And having it all in a tree makes it easier to search, too!
Parent
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:4, Funny)
deltree /y
Parent
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:What are the plans after the tree is dismantele (Score:5, Funny)
We'll need a solution to the traveling reindeer problem to figure that out.
Parent
I'd really be impressed... (Score:5, Funny)
...if he had made 2 trees to run in RAID 0.
Re:I'd really be impressed... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'd really be impressed... (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to Slashdot.
Parent
Re:I'd really be impressed... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'd really be impressed... (Score:5, Funny)
It's amazing how little people know about rectal surgery...
Hey! It's great to see another Slashdotter with the same hobby as mine!
So, what are your views on anterior modifications of the Delorme procedure, which requires less operative dissection, I personally think it can be performed with results nearly equivalent to those of the established Delorme procedure in the treatment of rectal outlet obstruction secondary to internal intussusception with or without rectocele.
Or do you disagree?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd really be impressed... (Score:4, Funny)
I suppose Raid 0+1 kills both ants and cockroaches. What is Raid 5 for?
Franz Kafka
Parent
wrong picture? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA shows a "tree" made of disk platters -- all shiny silver, no green. What's with the generic green xmas tree pic in the summary? Is that one of those "category" images?
This thread is useless without pics.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be nice if the picture attached to the story showed the actual tree. The site is barely loading....
Re:This thread is useless without pics.... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This thread is useless without pics.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, if you scrape the Christmas idea, redesign the top and add more blue LEDs into the thing, you could just end up with a nifty piece of art that's for life, not just for Chrstmas
Parent
Re:This thread is useless without pics.... (Score:4, Funny)
That's [wikipedia.org] good [imdb.com] to [youtube.com] know! [images-amazon.com]
Four upmods please?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The whole page [nyud.net] via CC
Re:This thread is useless without pics.... (Score:5, Informative)
Stupid Ajax. Curse it!
and the link I was trying to post: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Pam5qLu8CwY [youtube.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I miss these days (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
...IBM card wreaths
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Though, seconds 20 to 60 seem pretty pointless.
Idle (Score:4, Interesting)
1. samzenpus seems not to know where the Idle section is.
2. Irrelevant photo in summary.
3. Slashdotted site for TFA, rendering article completely pointless.
Every time it's the same. Is there a way to filter stories to cut out ones from individual editors? Samzenpus' contributions are invariably poor. Did he used to work for Digg?
Re:Idle (Score:5, Informative)
Is there a way to filter stories to cut out ones from individual editors?
Yes, it's in your system preferences.
Parent
Lots of work to do (Score:4, Funny)
As opposed to everybody else here who are so busy that they don't even have the time to look at Slashdot. Oh, wait...
Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Someone formatted my Christmas tree!!
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Must be the BOFH (Score:4, Funny)
Instead of formatting every hard drive (would have taken weeks performing a DoD level wipe) and disposing them all together with the servers, I decided to disassemble the hard drives and recycle them into something neat... The Xmas tree is made with parts from hard drives only except for one nut which I had to purchase for $0.39.
Sounds like you already had a nut - the one building the tree. I'm guessing you either:
Re:One Comment (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:FAIL (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Parent is not flamebait, the author actually wrote that in the article. It disturbed me, too.
And "megamerican" can please take his conspiracy theories elsewhere.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I would ... but it's completely slashdotted.
Wouldn't it have been a lot easier to put the proper pic instead of that green thing.
Re:Captain Obvious says: (Score:4, Informative)
And in case that does something bad, Google cache: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ajUtxPi4cb8J:toolmans.blogspot.com/+http://www.nzgames.com/forums/showthread.php%3Ft%3D81672 [google.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Question: are hard drive internals poisonous? (Score:5, Informative)
a) 15 drives isn't a lot.
b) If there were any volatile chemicals, they would have left long ago, by heating in an unsealed chamber (drives are NOT sealed to the air! If they were, the cases would rupture.)
c) If there were any loose chemicals, they'd have moved around in the case and screwed things up.
d) How deleted do you need your data? Do you actually know?
Realistically, you're looking at hard metals and hard ceramics. Are you eating parts from your hard drives? If not, then you've practically got nothing to worry about.
Sdelete can be quite thorough--far moreso than dismantling drives and bending platters. Specifically, "SDelete implements the Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DOD 5220.22-M..." Is that good enough for you? Do you know if it is?
I'm always slightly aggravated by people who say, "I need to destroy the data on this drive, but I didn't bother to learn how well software wipes work, so I decided to ignore all of the known data and invent my own procedure based on what I think would be a good idea."
Ask the important questions: What is the sensitivity of the data (i.e. how would your life be affected by its compromise--identity theft? divorce? jail?) and what is the desirability of it (how hard would someone work to find it)?
If you're producing kiddy porn or selling state secrets, then both of those factors are extremely high, and you should be investigating thermite. If they're tax returns and account spreadsheets from the past 15 years, then sdelete is probably overkill if used correctly (which can only be done IF YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH!). Maybe you're a doctor with patient records--consider hiring a professional data destruction service.
Bending platters and wiping magnets across them is haphazard, undocumented, unreliable, and unlikely. The only reason to dismantle a drive is to scavenge the parts, not wipe the data.
As an aside, anyone with sensitive documents that would affect others (i.e. doctors) has a moral responsibility to learn a sufficient amount about this stuff to deal with it properly.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for your input, I didn't realize they weren't vacuum sealed, but you make a great point about air expansion.
I have no clue what information I have on these drives, but don't worry, it's not kiddie porn. However, I do know the fallacy of assuming that data on my drives are not recoverable, even if I do take the proper measures using current technologies. What I don't like is the fact that I have my entire life exposed in some garbage dump, that maybe 10 years in the future some garbage dump scavenge
Re:Question: are hard drive internals poisonous? (Score:4, Funny)
I take 'em to the rifle range... not much can be recovered after a bunch of 30 caliber holes appear in it...
You'd be surprised at the lengths to which the RIAA will go to gather evidence.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
no chems to worry about except dust from the magnets if powdered and eaten.
really, though you have got to be trolling as no one is that paranoid who doesn't also have a reasonable grasp of the technology and cost benefit analysis.
Let's face it:
A simple dd 0 over a drive is sufficient for all the major recovery houses to say: "no can do"
If the government has the tech to recover that data anyway (which I would presume they have), it would be a time intensive affair. You have to be a very attractive target to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's an anti-hispanic jab, made by referencing their difficulty pronouncing "you". It just happens to look anti-semetic, but really, it's just anti-hispanic. Which is actually almost okay, because hispanics are almost white, and you're allowed to make fun of white folk.