Christmas Tree Made From 70 SCSI Hard Drives

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.

What are the plans after the tree is dismanteled

[raymansean]

How did we go from DOD erasure to removing the platters to make a tree? The data could still be recovered in its current tree state!

wrong picture?

[Bob-taro]

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....

[dgatwood]

It would be nice if the picture attached to the story showed the actual tree. The site is barely loading....

I miss these days

[COMON$]

When people made creative things out of old equipment. Haven't seen a good set of Christmas ornaments or bling from outdated equipment for a while. Years ago it was everywhere. Burnt platters, melted CDs, old tape tinsel....ahhh geekmas.

Re:This thread is useless without pics....

[teslar]

So you build something vaguely cone-shaped and because it's December, it gains +1 Christmassy? I mean, it's a bunch of platters stacked onto each other. I actually think it's pretty cool (especially the bottom part - gotta love the semi-chaotic shinyness. Not so much a fan of the top or the fact that it isn't exactly straight), but I wouldn't call it a Christmas tree.

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 ;)

Re:Jewtube?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it really have taken too much effort to rotate the first video by 90Â? Pretty poorly performed.

Re:FAIL

[skammie]

Actually, most autistic kids stack things very neatly and precisely. So no need to further heap insults on autistic children by comparing them to this guy.

Re:This thread is useless without pics....

[camperdave]

The guy could have at least used some of the drive spindle motors to make it spin on its own.

Re:Captain Obvious says:

[Joce640k]

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:Jewtube?

[multipartmixed]

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.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least its an honest wish. Happy Holidays is a cop out. In an attempt to be "all inclusive" we basically shut everyone out and not even allow them to know what religion we are. I am Christian, I say Merry Christmas. I am including you in the joy of my religion's holiday, regardless of weather you wish to partake of the holiday, I am extending the invitation at least. I have Jewish friends, who I knew were Jewish, and I explained this to them the first time I wished the Merry Christmas, that I knew they were Jewish, and I hope they have/had a Great Hanukkah when it rolls around (or rolled around), but for now, its Christmas and I wish them the joy of this holiday. Several of them wished me a Happy Hanukkah, with the intent that they were being sarcastic, but I thanked them very much for the thought. I did not bother with a "I don't celebrate Hanukkah, I celebrate Christmas" I just took it for what it was, a wish for happiness during that particular time of the year. Naming the holiday includes others in your life, not naming it puts up a barrier between you and them, quite in contradiction to the intent of the phrase.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Re:Question: are hard drive internals poisonous?

[CPE1704TKS]

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 scavenger happens to come across my drive, and the technology has advanced to the point that the information is completely recoverable.

What if I do a dd on my drives, throw them out, some dumpster diver picks them up, uses it for kiddie porn, then forgets about the drive. 5 years from now, someone happens to find the drive, gives it to the FBI, the technology advances to the point where they can somehow recover my TurboTax documents that were supposed to be deleted but actually weren't. They will come knocking on my door, take me down for questioning, and my reputation is ruined.

It's the exact same reason why I have zero presence on the Internet with my real identity. Data is forever. People could get screwed by it's misuse, and I don't want to be one of them. I don't need to apologize for being overly cautious. This isn't the 1950s anymore, you need to use different measures to protect yourself. 10 years ago, people would have laughed at you for shredding your documents with a crosscutting shredder. Now it's standard practice. I think people should treat all their information the exact same way.

Re:I'd really be impressed...

[supernova_hq]

Where is the "-1 too much information" mod?!?

Re:I'd really be impressed...

[santiagoanders]

People with dwarfism aren't special in this regard. I think this is generally true of all people.

Re:Question: are hard drive internals poisonous?

[toddestan]

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 scavenger happens to come across my drive, and the technology has advanced to the point that the information is completely recoverable.

If you're really that paranoid, why don't you just keep the drives around after you SDelete them? 15 drives really don't take up much space, even less so if you reduce it to just a stack of platters and get rid of the other bits. That way, you don't have to worry about anyone scavenging the drives from a garbage dump somewhere. And besides, keeping them around could mean burying them in your yard and pouring a concrete porch over them. I would say that's pretty secure.