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Comment by jusssi | Hacker News Reader

Damn, now I want one just to de-lid one and put it on a shelf. Looks like eBay has plenty of these.

Tempting.

I wonder what material they used for the platter. I once took apart a 1.8" drive, and got a big surprise when the platter suddenly shattered. I was expecting aluminum, not glass/ceramic substrate.

Yes, glass was the typical substrate used in small HDDs, even in many of the 2.5" HDDs, e.g. in all the 2.5" HDDs that I had.

It is easier to ensure that glass substrates are perfectly plane and without any surface defects than for substrates made of aluminum alloy.

In 3.5" disks the risk of shattering becomes too great, so aluminum alloy is preferred.

I discovered that one day when I accidentally stepped on a removed 2.5" platter in bare feet :)

One of my most delightful discoveries of the early 2000s was that iPod Minis used Microdrives that were pin-compatible with CompactFlash cards. I had a little cottage industry in the back of my office upgrading my coworkers’ old iPods to use bigger, solid state disks. I still have my 256GB iPod Mini. Aside from battery life, it still runs fine, and it is by far my favorite music player form factor.

> ... "and it is by far my favorite music player form factor."

I really liked the old original iPod Nano myself. Had one for years that I was triple-booting RockBox (for extended media formats support and fancier interface), iPodLinux (for playing Doom and other toys), and the original iPod OS (just in case). Still haven't yet owned another device in that size / form factor that can do as much as that little thing did. Apple really did make some sweet devices back in the day... :)

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