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

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.

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Tempest1981 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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adrian_b 2 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	alnwlsn an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I discovered that one day when I accidentally stepped on a removed 2.5" platter in bare feet :)