Hard drive clocks has been around for as long as hard drives has been around. The first ones simply had a disc and the regular hands, the second generation had a whole hard drive and regular hands. Here we take a look on how to build The real hard drive clock. Even though this clock might not fit into every home, it definitely has something about it that makes it nice to look at.
If I say ‘Hard drive clock’ then you’re going to say ‘What’s new
about that - it’s been done a million times’.
Yes -
but not like this! A normal hard drive clock would be using the
disc as background plus the regular hands for hours and minutes, or you could
lift the lid of the hard drive and drill a hole all the way through engine and
all (kind of) and then mount the regular hands. Boooring!
My goal - a wall clock that only shows pieces from hard drives. No plastic hands
here please.
Thanks Joe and Curt for the idea!
Well, with the wonderful bearings in the arms to the heads it shouldn’t be
too difficult use the arms as the hands of the clock. So let’s do this!
After taking out two heads I noticed that they’re from two different hardware
revisions. One is for three discs and the other is for 4 as you can see on the
picture.. I think that will only be cool that they look slightly different.
Needless to say you will need to be careful when handling the heads as the tip
will be damaged easily. Cut off the excessive cable piece but be careful so that
you don’t damage the wires that go out to the head - it might stop working you
know…
I got the clock mechanism from a old clock that I even forgot I had, even
though it was hanging in my office. The ring that attaches the ‘item’ to the
clock is very small as you can see on the picture. The discs hole is a lot
bigger and what better to fill the gap then the original ring that holds down
the discs in the hard drive? It’s a bit tricky to centre it but with a bit of
patience you’ll manage just fine.
Authored by
Christoffer Järnåker at
GRYNX, Added: 2 Apr 2006
http://www.grynx.com/projects/build-a-real-hard-drive-clock/
