"Mister, what's inside a hard drive?"

"Go away kid, don't bother me!"  JUST KIDDING!  I would NEVER say that to anyone!  I love telling people what I know about stuff.  Sometimes they don't even have to ask...   :-)  Another day of throwing stuff out, and I came across a box of old hard drives.  I have heard stories of people buying a box of old hard drives, and hooking them up and retrieving other people's data left on the drive.  So to prevent anyone being able to read the drive, I took the top off the drive, and then bashed the platter with a hammer.  It does seem like a shame to destroy something so beautiful.  The platter is the large gold-colored thing that looks like a record.  The thing that looks like a record player arm is the read-write head that puts data on the drive and reads it back.  In case you are curious what is under the drive, I have included a photo of the underside of the drive as well.  All those chips on the circuit board electronics control the movement of the actuator and the rotation of the disk, and perform reads and writes on demand from the disk controller.  A really complicated process we all take for granted.