I present to your attention another color music, or rather the volume level indicator, since it is a column of LEDs that turn on one after another depending on the output signal of the audio amplifier. For these purposes, I used the UAA180 microcircuit, you can also take K1003PP1 and A277D, these are all complete analogs of each other and turn on in exactly the same way. Each of these chips is a 12 LED driver. In addition to the fact that it can be used as a color music, this microcircuit can also be used as an elementary voltmeter with a measurement threshold of 6v. But I nevertheless decided to collect color music.
And so I decided to use a hard drive enclosure for this purpose. First, you actually need to disassemble the hard drive and remove from it what we don't need
Next, you need to take the LEDs and solder them into a ring, I used super bright LEDs with a power supply of 3V. You can use almost any that you can find.
We solder and put them in place of the actual disc itself
After all the LEDs are soldered and installed, I advise you to fill them with hot melt glue or, in extreme cases, ordinary ones.
Now the control microcircuit itself is needed, which is also quite simple to assemble, and so here is the actual driver circuit itself.
Everything is simple here, this is how contacts on UAA180 are considered
After that, we solder the LEDs to the circuit using wires
We connect, we check and everything should work the first time, to check, you can connect 5 volts to the input and turn the potentiometer to watch how the microcircuit reacts to changes in the input voltage.
We connect the output from your audio amplifier to the input of the microcircuit and everything will work fine.
Do not rush to throw away hard drives left after upgrading your computer or hard drives that are out of order - you can always find a new use for them. For example, make a mirror, a watch, a safe for storing cash, a network drive, and other useful things.
The purposes for which old hard drives can be used depend on whether they are in working order or not. It is curious that a functioning hard drive has much fewer uses than a non-working one.
Portable storage
If the hard drive is in working order, it can be turned into a portable storage device. To do this, it is enough to buy an external container for a hard drive and place a hard drive in it. Depending on the size of the drive, a power adapter may be required, for example, if the drive is 3.5 ", whereas an adapter is usually not needed for 2.5" drives.
Home cloud server
If you already have an external drive and don't need another one, you can use a working hard drive to create your own NAS, and then you can access the data on the drive from any device connected to your Wi-Fi network. If you are not ready to spend the extra money, you can build your own NAS based on the Raspberry Pi single board computer.
How non-working hard drives can be used
A defective hard drive cannot be used to store data, but its physical components can have other uses. Before starting work, you need to disassemble it into "spare parts". The process is demonstrated in the video posted below.
Magnetic knife bar
Hard discs contain large neodymium magnets that can be used to create a magnetic knife holder. All you need is a bar, magnets, glue and a set of common tools.
Mirror
Optical discs in a hard drive can serve as an excellent mirror. Discs must be removed very carefully so that chips and scratches do not appear. They can then be placed in the office, used as a signal or pocket mirror.
Wind chimes
Optical discs can be used to create not only mirrors, but also other pretty gizmos, such as wind chimes. To manufacture them, you will need the actual optical discs, the hard drive case, a metal fastening ring and a cord with which the structural elements will be connected.
Secret safe
Creative use can be found not only in the components of the hard drive, but also in its case, for example, as a safe for storing money. It is quite easy to make - just remove all the components from the case and screw the cover to one of the upper corners of the case using a bolt. As a result, you will have a container of a swivel type, where you can put your money.
Introduction.
Most laptop owners sooner or later face the problem of lack of space. As a rule, laptops with screen sizes up to 15 "do not have a free second slot for a 2.5" device. Therefore, the owners are forced to think about either replacing the laptop itself, or replacing its hard drive. After replacing the hard drive, there is always an old drive that can be easily turned into an external USB drive for data transfer.
Naturally, you can purchase a 2.5-inch mobile hard drive and convert it into an external drive. Fortunately, the cost of external storage allows it. For example, at the time of this writing, they ask for $ 40 for a 250 GB mobile hard drive, and for a 500 GB device from WD they ask for only $ 45.
We decide on the type of hard drive.
For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that an ordinary desktop 3.5-inch hard drive can also be turned into an external drive - you simply cannot call it mobile. If you have an unused 2.5 or 3.5 inch hard drive available, then first of all you need to decide on the type of its interface.
The following interface types exist on the market today: IDE (ATA) and various SATA options. As a rule, all SATA interfaces are backward compatible with each other, and we will not dwell on their variations. The situation is quite different between IDE and SATA interfaces, which are absolutely incompatible with each other and have different connectors.
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The figure shows you two hard drives with different interfaces. Winchesters have a mobile format of 2.5 inches. On the left is a SATA hard drive, on the right is an IDE hard drive.
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We have in our hands a 250 GB hard drive from Western Digital, Scorpio Blue series with a SATA interface. This drive was used for a long time in the Acer laptop, but its capacity was not enough, and it was replaced by a more spacious 500 GB solution.
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Despite the long-term use, the work of the hard drive did not cause any complaints, so it was decided to use it as an external mobile drive. To do this, we had to find an external case for him, which we did. External AGESTAR case for a 2.5-inch mobile hard drive.
In hardware stores, there are many different external cases for 2.5-inch hard drives. Their key difference is as follows:
- body material,
- type of external port (interface),
- cost.
As a rule, various cases with a USB 2.0 interface are presented in stores, cases with an eSATA interface are presented in a much smaller number, and even fewer cases with their combination of USB 2.0 & eSATA. Several cases with a modern USB 3.0 interface were found on sale, but their cost exceeded the cost of the hard drive itself, so we did not consider them.
The key difference between USB 2.0 and eSATA is data transfer speed. Using the USB 2.0 interface allows for maximum compatibility, since these ports are available on all computers. A significant disadvantage of the USB 2.0 interface is the low data transfer rate, which will not allow you to unleash the full speed potential of your hard drive.
The eSATA port is more promising, but it is not widely used and is found only in expensive versions of motherboards, cases and laptops. The eSATA interface allows you to fully unleash the potential of SATA devices.
The material of manufacture can also be very different. In the simple case, it is plastic. In more expensive versions, an aluminum case with a leather case is included.
The cost of external cases also varies. The cheapest option will cost the user $ 3, the expensive versions will cost more than $ 100.
Buying a $ 100 hard drive case that costs less than $ 40 when it's new and half the price once it's started is wasteful, to say the least. Therefore, for testing, we were provided with a case worth a symbolic $ 3 - AgeStar SUB2P1. Completion and external examination of AgeStar SUB2P1.
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We didn’t expect any miracles from the $ 3 device, both in terms of equipment and in terms of performance. The device comes modestly packed in a bag. The front wall of the device is covered with a cardboard box listing the key characteristics of the device. This is support for 2.5-inch mobile hard drives or solid-state drives with a SATA interface, the presence of a USB 2.0 data transfer interface and various color options.
In fairness, it should be noted that our suppliers have confirmed that they have not seen anything other than the black color of this case.
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After opening the package, we were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the set contains an operating manual completely in Russian.
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The case is completely made of plastic. On the front wall there are paper stickers indicating the model, which in any case will be erased, therefore we recommend that they be removed from the surface of the device immediately.
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The case is made of soft black plastic, which does not smell, it is homogeneous throughout its structure.
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The device covers open in two different directions, which provides easy removal and installation of the hard drive in an external case.
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The two sides of the outer case are fixed with a plastic latch made of case material. Thanks to the recesses on the walls of the lid, they are securely fixed and pouring a glass of liquid, or leaving the device in the rain, will hardly lead to any problems.
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The device is designed for SATA hard drives, which we have repeatedly emphasized. Controllers with SATA ports for power and data transfer are soldered inside.
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A mini USB port for data transfer and power supply to the hard drive is soldered on the side wall. There is no additional port to provide power to the drive, which may cause some problems for users. With a weak power supply that lowers the voltage on the 5 volt line, you often have to face problems with starting the hard drive. As a rule, connecting the drive directly to the port on the motherboard, and not on the case of the system unit, using a high-quality USB cable allows you to forget about this problem.
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Sellers of computer components often, as an advantage of one or another external case, talk about the presence of a USB data cable in the kit or offer to purchase it separately if it is not available. We advise our users not to pay attention to this, since a mini-USB-USB cable is usually available in almost every family and is often supplied with mobile phones. In our case, we successfully used a stale data cable from a Nokia mobile phone.
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The next step is to install the hard drive in the case. This is done quite simply - by lightly pressing. The most important thing is to first correctly rotate the hard drive according to the SATA power and data ports located in the case.
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The absence of any protruding elements on the hard drive controller circuit allows you not to worry about its back surface during transportation and use of the device.
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Some users may argue that the plastic case does not provide adequate heat dissipation from the hard drive. Naturally, external cases made of aluminum are much more efficient in this task. At the same time, one should not forget that mobile hard drives do not have such a high power consumption to suffer from overheating, and in laptops, as a rule, they are not additionally cooled by anything.
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After the end of the assembly of the device, the stage of testing and using it begins. Applying voltage to the device is accompanied by the glow of a blue LED, which also symbolizes the user about the data transfer process. It should be noted that not everyone will start working with the created external drive smoothly. If the hard drive has already been used, formatted and partitions have been created on it, you will not have any problems getting started. It is defined as an ordinary USB flash drive using the Plug & Play method. But those users who have purchased a new hard drive without formatting and with no partitions will have a problem associated with the absence of a drive letter in the "My Computer" tab.
To do this, you need to create partitions on the hard drive and format it. This can be done through various boot disks, but it is better not to bother and do it in the Windows operating system itself.
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To do this, you need to go to the "Control Panel" through the "Start" section, then visit the "Administrative Tools" section. In this section, select "Computer Management", where in the "Disk Management" tab you can mark and format the newly connected external drive. After creating partitions, formatting them, you will have access to them through the "My Computer" tab and you will be able to exchange with the drive, as with a regular hard drive. Test configuration.
The assembled external drive was tested both on a desktop computer based on a modern Core i7 processor and an equally modern motherboard, and on an Acer Aspire 7730 laptop based on a Core 2 Duo processor. It should be noted that the level of performance on two different systems turned out to be comparable.
1. Data reading speed was tested in HD Tach 3.0.4.0 software
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It is pleasant to note that the external drive we assembled shows a much higher level of performance than the WD My Passport Essential external hard drive we tested earlier. The maximum data transfer rate was 34.3 Mb / s, and the average latency was about 17.9 ms.
2. Speed of data reading in HD Tune 4.5.
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In the second synthetic test, we got similar data to the previous ones, which also turned out to be slightly better than the official WD My Passport Essential external hard drive.
3. Speed of recording 64 MB files in HD Tune 4.5.
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Somewhat more valuable is testing closer to practice, by writing 64 MB files. In this test, we got quite expected results, which were also limited only by the capabilities of the USB 2.0 interface.
Separately, I would like to note that during the entire test the temperature of the hard drive did not exceed 35 degrees Celsius, while a similar hard drive installed in the laptop had a temperature of about 43 degrees. Therefore, worrying about the working conditions of the hard drive in this case on the part of users will be unnecessary.
4. Boot speed of the Windows 7 operating system.
During practical testing on the speed of loading an image of the Windows 7 operating system, we obtained results similar to those for other external drives with a USB 2.0 interface.
5. Evaluation of drive performance in Windows 7 environment.
We tested the performance of the external drive we assembled using the Windows 7 operating system. To do this, call the command in the command line: "winsat disk -drive g -ran -write -count 10", where "g" is the letter of the tested disk in the system.
The test results show that the drive we assembled received a much higher rating than the factory-built WD My Passport Essential solution. 
Conclusion.
Based on the materials of this article, it can be seen that any mobile hard drive can be turned into a good external drive without unnecessary hassle. Especially for testing, we asked for the cheapest external case, worth $ 3. Three dollars allows you to get an excellent external drive from a mobile hard drive, at least for data storage. Not to mention the fact that the same external case facilitates data recovery from the hard drive of "dead" laptops.
Despite the fact that many people criticize AgeStar products for their poor quality, for many years of using it, I have only a positive impression of it. First of all, it is for a democratic cost. Defects are found in all manufacturers, even though AgeStar has a slightly higher figure than Thermaltake. But the latter has no analogue to the presented external case for three dollars and with a 6-month warranty. We present AgeStar products with a gold medal of honor for the optimal performance / price ratio.
Hello everyone! The idea itself is not new. They say the internet is full of such records, I have not seen it yet, the idea appeared by itself. I was impatient here, you know, to urgently sharpen a knife and a screwdriver ... But "OH GOD!" Emery in the garage, but at work there is not even a file ... Well, we are “sysadmins” people are simple and I got into the “bins of the Motherland” and took out ... An old hard drive from a PC ...
We take scissors, screwdrivers, sandpaper, our hdd and double-sided tape
Everything we need.
We unscrew the bolts. 7 bolts are always hidden under the sticker.
……………………………………………………………….
We open it. and everything is so beautifully packed there. glitters.
We turn off the actuator and the lever for moving the heads, Magnets for experiments, the rest can be scrapped.
Unscrew the disc mounting cover and remove the washer above the disc, as well as the disc itself
We put the disc on sandpaper, outline the contours and cut out
These are the bagels)
We glue double-sided tape to our disc (you can add it to glue, but it will be easier to replace the sandpaper with scotch tape)
……………………………………………………………………………………
ISKRIM))))
Well, about the work of this device.
It is better to take sandpaper with a small fraction, it is rather weak for a large engine. But I had enough to sharpen everything I needed, even very much. Bye everyone!
In this post, we'll take a look at what you can make by using an unwanted old hard drive.
Neodymium magnets in a computer
First you need to unscrew a few screws that secure the body parts. We see a neodymium magnet under the cover. Hard drives use very powerful magnets that can lift 1,300 times their own weight.
All modern drives always have two stops for the magnetic head unit and, accordingly, 2 neodymium magnets. To remove the 2 magnet, you need to unscrew another screw and remove it together with the holder, or unscrew the magnetic head unit first, and then pry it off with a screwdriver.
The applications of neodymium magnets are almost limitless. For clips and clamps, toys and entertainment, cleaning engine and transmission oil, searching for treasures and lost iron objects under water, making motors and generators, restoring the magnetic properties of other magnets, and much, much more.
Mini emery from hard drive
To do this, you first need to transfer the dimensions of the disc to sandpaper, it is convenient to do this with a compass. You should use fine grit sandpaper so as not to overload the engine. So, we cut out the outer diameter with scissors and the inner one with a clerical knife.
Glue sandpaper wherever possible with glue. But in order not to wait a long time for the glue to dry and so that you can easily change the sanding paper, you can use double-sided tape.
The emery is already ready. We connect it to the connector from the computer power supply and use it. With its small dimensions, such an emery machine is quite powerful. Its power is enough for sharpening screwdrivers, pencils, chisels and curved knives.
How to eliminate PC noise
Old computer cases are often very noisy. One of the causes of this problem is the direct attachment of the hard drive to the PC case. When reading information, the disc develops tremendous speeds and, accordingly, a small vibration appears, which is transmitted to the entire computer case. A small manufacturing defect, poor soldering or an incomplete screw in the case lid will always remind you of this.
To fix this problem, we only need to cut 4 rubber strips. These can be old bicycle tubes, deflated baby balls, or a piece of silicone car mat. We fasten the ribbons to the hard drive and attach it to a new location just below the DVD-ROM, or even instead.
In general, the result is excellent, as all vibrations are absorbed by the rubber bands. Also, this device can be called an anti-shock. If you accidentally kick your PC, the hard drive will not be affected in any way.
