I've got a bunch of bad HardDrives with good spindle motors. I hate to throw them away. Surely, there's a fun and maybe useful project for these things.

I also come across bad optical/CDROM drives frequently. They have nice motors of varying sizes in them too.

What do ya think?


Some of the spindle motors are removable. Some seem to be welded to the body.
Are they stepper motors or something else? How are they driven? Most have 4 or 5 contacts on them - driven from the controller board.
I wonder if the motors are strong enough to mount on a big toy and used as independent wheel drive motors or to turn a prop. A friend of mind ran a little blower fan with one - it spun crazy-fast.



OH...and before you say it....I know there's some nice magnets in the HDs.
With some work, you can remove the magnets from the plate they are adhered to. Stack several magnets together. Very very strong field. I've been pinched pretty good. There are power generation plans and projects around the net for these.