Amazing led on a hard drive

[keymaker]

I was burning up hard drives with a battery charger and I noticed this one led would come on when I hooked the charger up to certain things<p>And when I had it set to 50 amps it got a bit brighter<p>It wouldn't die<p>
And so finally I hooked it directly to this led and it just sits there working fine
Shouldn't it die?

[bwts]

May B it loves U<p>B)

[bridgen]

Yes, it should.<p>But some parts occasionally exhibit great tenacity and hang on under the most adverse conditions. <p>At one time I had to put faults on equipment for students to trouble-shoot. It became rather tedious to remove good components and solder in a dud replacement. I found it was a lot quicker - and a lot more fun - to poke around the "victim" equipment with a pair of test prods with their leads connected to a 30V 10A power source. I discovered several 1N4148 diodes which refused to die. <p>When I had more time I looked into it a bit more and found that they would pass many amps, and glow like a small light bulb, without faillng. <p>They were thrown out afterwards because they just couldn't be trusted in service after having been treated like that.

[Mike]

Can I just ask why in the world you'd purposely destroy a HDD?<p>Thats just stupid, as far as i see it.<p>but anyway, what voltage were you putting into it?
i think that they can handle as much current as long as it was low voltage.<p>
Can you just tell me the logic behind phsically destroying the hdd? All i could think of is sensitive data, but there are plenty free programs to clear the drives

[Bernius1]

I remember putting a 1/4" plug on the speaker leads of a practice amp, and plugging that into a 50W Univox tube head. Sweetest distortion I ever heard. And my first experience with an LED was to test it across the leads of a 9V battery (not wanting to 'waste' energy in a resistor). But it kept getting too hot to hold !!! Never burnt out .

[keymaker]

The reason for it is simple, it makes great noises and sometimes becomes sort of violent the chips will begin to smoke, and then start turning orange, and then burst into flames and sometimes they will then fly across the room!
The sparks and the noise do something for me
*shrug*<p> To destroy sensitive data, I'd probably not want to destroy the drives electronics... I'd want to write 0's to the whole drive. And then if I still didn't trust that, I'd burn the disc itself.<p> Don't worry I only zapped about 20 drives yesterday they're just 1 and 2 gigs<p>
I have 300 left!!!
LOOK OUT!!!! <p>
:=)

[Mike]

If you don't mind me asking, where did you get 300 drives?<p>I bet you there is some mysterious electronics site out there with odd stories that don't fit the rules of electronics (such as these LED stories.<p>While were sharing LED stories, I took a power supply I built with a 7812 regulator, and a small yellow square LED.<p>I connected the terminals to the PS, and flipped the switch. Half of the yellow plastic part shot off and hit the wall in a split second. It was a mini-rocket!!

[keymaker]

Maybe I can sell the remaining 200 drives I did not burn

[Mark01]

Are the motors in HDD brushless ?

[myszka_us2000]

You know, the smoke you let out of those components is very often quite toxic. I hope you don't breathe the stuff in too often, or you won't be able to get through all 300 drives.<p>That said, why not just take the parts out and make robots from them?<p>The motors in those drives are quite neat. And the magnets will fetch a pretty penny too.<p>Have fun... <p>John M...
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[keymaker]

what in all hell are you talking about
I ll tell you one thign my sister stopped by and i was showing her how I Burn the drives
Well
I open the door for ventilations and uh<p>
god<p>she sure did bitch bout bein cold<p>
hehehhe<p> safety first<p>PNEUMONIA BEATS CANCER<p>

[High4Volts]

have you timed different brands and seen which brand blows first??? LOL

[keymaker]

ASIANS!

[bwts]

Mark01 the motors R steppa motors.<p>B)

[Engineer1138]

It's probably an LED with integrated resistor, they're commonly used when you need a simple indicator powered directly off 5 or 12V.<p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by keymaker:
I was burning up hard drives with a battery charger and I noticed this one led would come on when I hooked the charger up to certain things<p>And when I had it set to 50 amps it got a bit brighter<p>It wouldn't die<p>
And so finally I hooked it directly to this led and it just sits there working fine
Shouldn't it die?<hr></blockquote>