Project: Hard Drive PC

[TheGreatSatan]

While waiting for parts to arrive and new ideas to sprout up on my CLOWNED project, I've started another. I'm building a custom case made of Hard Drives. All of the HD's are DEAD. Many are 2GB and below, 1 is the 120GB HD I had in Air Force One that died. My teachers were happy to unload the mounting piles of dead HD's they had and I was happy to take 'em. To start, see the 2 boxes worth of dead HD's I've gotten.

I'm taking off all of the covers on these drives to expose the platters. Some of the screws didn't want to come out so I used my dremel to cut a slit into it making each one removable with a flat head.

Here's some samples of the covers off.

First I laid them all next to eachother to align the holes already on the bottom.

I'm creating my own brackets to join all of the drives together. This piece used to be the vent of an old PSU. As of now, there will be six HD's for each panel platters facing out with plexi covering them.

Then I used some mesh to join them all together.

Lastly I screwed on the first sheet of plexi. I'll need to buy more for the rest of the case.

[TheGreatSatan]

I fixed the HD's

[TheGreatSatan]

I finished the second side.

And I have two done.

Next I have to make them connect somehow....maybe with mesh. Then I'll mount at least two drives to the top.

[TheGreatSatan]

I'm just trying to get an idea of what the case may look with the top on. Nothing has been connected just yet. With the top drives sitting on the ends of the side drives I'll lose at least an inch, so I'll have to connect them at a lower point.

[TheGreatSatan]

Still looking into that...

I decided to use mesh to connct the sides to the top. This is not final. I may change it.

And it's all connected. The top glass looks blurry because I haven't removed the protective film yet.

[TheGreatSatan]

I have this tiny micro ATX I may use to wrap the HD's around. That way I'll have support and already made I/O ports.

[TheGreatSatan]

I laid the drives on top of the case to get an idea of the width required. As you can see the drives aren't as long as the case is wide. If I do go with the case for mounting the drives, then what sould be in this gap? Should I maybe paint it Silver or chrome to match?

[TheGreatSatan]

I repositioned the HD's on top so that they are side-by-side just as Boddaker @ Gruntville thought of. Luckily I still had one drive left for the top. Now there are 4 on top instead of the previous 3; In total there are 16 drives on the case, thus far.

I set one of the sides next to the case so you can see how it'll look when complete.

[TheGreatSatan]

I maked off the sides so I could make some cuts. The screws will go from the inside throght the mesh and then into to the mounting holes on the drives. This way they'll be securely attached to the sides.

After I attached the sides I set up the top to connect those drives too.

Then I screwed on the nuts and cut off the excess.

The top and sides are attached.

[TheGreatSatan]

Now to plan the front. I'm using 2 drives side-by-side at the bottom. I will also be disguising the power button.

I was worried because I had run out of useable dead drives, when I found an old box!