Xmas tree made entirely of SCSI drives, offers lower CPU load than IDE alternatives

Ever found yourself with 70 decommissioned SCSI hard drives and an awful, awful lot of free time on your hands? If so, and you're bursting with holiday spirit, perhaps you'll choose to do the same as an apparent sys admin who goes by the name of Trigger. He took those drives from RAID arrays destined for the scrap heap and, rather than perform the DoD wipe that would have otherwise been required, chose to build this lovely -- if somewhat askew (see below) -- "tree" from the bevy of mirrored platters within. In fact the geeky holiday decor was made entirely from the bits and pieces within the drives, the lone exception being a nut purchased for $.39, making it a far more affordable project than yesterday's OLED tree. It's impressive to behold, but given the amount of personal data within, we think it's probably more likely to spread lawsuits than cheer this season.

[Mobius_1 @ Dec 18th 2008 8:55AM]

All that a scammer/spammer wants for Christmas is this tree :P

[Leo @ Dec 18th 2008 12:09PM]

EXACTLY! - imagine this as a gift from your wife / gf / imaginary partner:

"Hey hon, happy holidays - I hope you're going to be happy with your xmas tree made up of 38 TERRABYTES of Pr0n"


Ahhh, if only real life was even 1% as good as my imagination.......

[Tarnation @ Dec 18th 2008 8:56AM]

Physical destruction of hard drives is way more fun that DoD. Big hammer and a Drill nothing more satisfying.

[rcappo @ Dec 18th 2008 10:53AM]

Termite is the way to go. Get a stack of them and watch the termite drop through all of them.

[Freakin Ijit @ Dec 18th 2008 11:17AM]

Termite ==> Thermite

[adamck @ Dec 18th 2008 8:56AM]

Oh SCSIMASTREE Oh SCSIMASTREE
How are thy leaves so verdant....

[kal326 @ Dec 18th 2008 12:05PM]

@Adamck
I was thinking something more along the lines of:

Oh crashed HsD, oh crashed HDs
I make a metallic Xmas tree of thee

[Jason @ Dec 18th 2008 12:23PM]

And when I see the BSOD blue
How often then, I think of you

[Freakin Ijit @ Dec 18th 2008 8:57AM]

Bet that sucker is heavy.

[Metamorphic @ Dec 18th 2008 9:01AM]

Nice holiday tree

[DiGiC @ Dec 18th 2008 9:06AM]

Engadget just promoted Christmas from Holiday tree to Xmas Tree!

[ED @ Dec 18th 2008 5:20PM]

In just a few more days of such promotion, they'll have a "we all love baby Jesus tree"

[unconfirmed @ Dec 18th 2008 9:31AM]

I think the data will be safe. I read an article from OnTrack in PC Pro that said the only sure fire way of destroying data on a hard drive was to remove the shiny platters from the central 'core' or placing the hard drive in acid, but only if it destroyed that central core.

I'm sure there's someone here more knowledgeable on this type of thing.

From http://www.actionfront.com/ts_dataremoval.aspx

Physically disassembling a disk drive and "randomly" removing the platters from the spindle is a highly effective form of protection. Despite claims to the contrary, technology does not exist to remove the platters (without extensive control measures) from one device and read them back with another machine.

At the time of manufacture, control signals (servo information) are written to every drive after is has been assembled. Any attempt to recreate or read back these signals once the exact alignment and relative positioning of the platters and the head stack have been altered is virtually impossible.

[chefgon_ign @ Dec 18th 2008 9:42AM]

How wonderfully educational

[absinthe party @ Dec 18th 2008 10:20AM]

Deliciously informative?

[Farris @ Dec 18th 2008 10:31AM]

Splendidly significant?

[Tarnation @ Dec 18th 2008 10:42AM]

Dubiously Deductive Any who I do believe my suggestion of imaging the user who annoys you the most and applying untold levels of whoop ass to a platter will go quite far to erasing it or at least get you to the point where you won't care anymore. Or you can just put on that song that goes Bang Bang Maxwell's Silver Hammer Came Down...and rawk out.

[absinthe party @ Dec 18th 2008 11:27AM]

@ Tarnation

Way to ruin a thread that could have been amazing, and subsequently ruining my day.

[Jason @ Dec 18th 2008 11:58AM]

Damnably intrusive, that.

[Shinigami @ Dec 18th 2008 8:16PM]

Admin! Light it up! xD

[Jonathan @ Dec 18th 2008 10:25AM]

This has to be one of Engadget's best headlines of 2008.

[andy @ Dec 18th 2008 10:32AM]

Engadget, this is not a joke. I do not patronize businesses that treat me poorly. If you intentionally insult my intelligence and religion even once more, you will never get another page impression from me. I will find another tech blog for my daily checkup. You may think it's funny or something, and that's your right. It's also my choice to never visit your site again. You can cut it out now, the joke is over.

[TimStevens @ Dec 18th 2008 10:38AM]

Sorry Andy, you've lost us. Are you upset about the use of Xmas? If so... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas

[Tarnation @ Dec 18th 2008 10:42AM]

Now where is your /Sarcasm tag. Huh or does you just has da sour grapes :( How was this in anyway insulting to you. I know as a christian you can't be insulted by this.

[Oli D @ Dec 18th 2008 10:53AM]

"Oh Xmas tree, Oh xmas tree"

"Fry, can i axe you a question?"

[andy @ Dec 18th 2008 1:09PM]

No sarcasm. This is the second time in two days that the editors of engadget have gone out of their way to minimize and devalue Christmas. Yesterday, they changed an article from "Christmas Tree" to "Holiday Tree" despite the source using "Christmas". Today, after the clear majority called them out for yesterday's stupidity, they used acceptable, but uncommon shorthand to avoid writing "Christmas". Unless you're writing articles on an iPhone, it takes a normal typist a fraction of a second to write "Christmas". That means that they're not doing it to be quick, easy, or apease someone, but because they have a personal bias against Christ and Christians. That's fine, but I don't mix business with personal agendas because it'll lose business. The same principle applies to Engadget.

[anonymouspimp @ Dec 18th 2008 11:52AM]

OMG just go away. You are waaaay too over sensitive for the internet.

[kal326 @ Dec 18th 2008 12:03PM]

Would you feel better if it was called by its most fitting name?

Materialism Day?

[Jason @ Dec 18th 2008 12:17PM]

Dude, don't be an idiot. Even the early church used the Greek letter chi (X) to represent the messianic epithet of "Christ". Besides that if you want to be offended, then be offended that the pagan lichtfest symbol of a lighted tree was assimilated into "your" religious holiday. Be offended that people will mindlessly trample a man just to get a bargain to celebrate the virgin-born son of God.

If your going to be offended, be offended intelligently. But don't be a whiny-baby-pants about some AOL-tech-site-witty-quip-popularity-contest blog calling "your" syncretistic pagan-christian symbol by the CORRECT name but in a style that you don't like.

When Paul said to gird up your loins with truth, he meant for you to employ common sense, put on a cup, and be a man; NOT cry like sissy.

- Oh God, please forgive your people for acting like chickified wannies.

[Mobius_1 @ Dec 18th 2008 1:08PM]

lol wtf, he basically banished himself from Engadget-dom.

Party?

[drumdbeat @ Dec 18th 2008 2:05PM]

Andy, you quite possibly got fucking told, mate. Oh yes.

Also, could it not simply be that the editor is making the article more friendly to those readers that do not celebrate Christmas?
It is still an internationally recognised holiday for millions of people, but it's religious significance is varied amongst different people.

[phanbouy fan fan @ Dec 18th 2008 2:54PM]

And the lord did grin, and Jason fed upon the lambs, and sloths, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals and...

[maveric101 @ Dec 18th 2008 8:12PM]

please people just realize that andy is not a good representation of christians as a whole. most christians are perfectly rational. personally i found the use of "holiday tree" unnecessary, but i don't see what could be the problem with "Xmas tree"

[LarryLarryLarry @ Dec 19th 2008 7:04AM]

What's the big deal about writing the word "Christ"? Are people afraid they'll become the next Jimmy Swaggart if they READ the word? I hear about Allah every time the news is on and I haven't switched over to Islam.

There's only one kind of word we use symbols to replace in English. "Curse" words. You (*&&#*() sons of (*@U*&@. If you want to say "Jesus Christ" when you're mad, as many do, that is your right. But that doesn't make the name a curse word.

You can see from this post that changing "Christ" to "X" does NOT avoid offending people. No matter what you type, someone is going to flip out. So just type the real thing and let the chips fall where they may. There must be an atheist Gadgeteer who is not afraid to read the word "Christ". Let him type it.

Using this monstrosity as a guideline, I will define a real, organic Christmas tree as "a pile of uselss, discarded sticks and needles." Or we could just pretend that the person who created and shared this with the world was in their right mind.

[Vorin @ Dec 19th 2008 11:04AM]

so many people don't realize that the "X" is not meant to take christ out of X-mas, but noone cares to look it up.

"Chi or X is often used to abbreviate the name Christ, as in the holiday Christmas (Xmas). When fused within a single typespace with the Greek letter Rho, it is called the labarum and used to represent the person of Jesus Christ."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_(letter)

andy, i know you're only trying to do the right thing and make sure everyone knows you love Jesus, but take a piece of advice from the Man Himself

"Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men."Matt 6:1-2

[Twist @ Dec 18th 2008 10:39AM]

I hope he remembered to set all his jumpers to unique IDs and to properly terminated his device chain ;)

[Oli D @ Dec 18th 2008 10:51AM]

Raiding 70 SCSI drives...

I want that too in a sandwich

(along with an i7 and DDR3 1666)

[doakes @ Dec 18th 2008 10:56AM]

In addition to the alignment problems outlined by Unconfirmed, any given single platter from a RAID 5 array is totally useless for data retreival, it probably only has one or two bits of each byte, reconstruction of the data would be impossible without most of the other platters.

[TREX6662k5 @ Dec 18th 2008 11:30AM]

Whats stopping him performing a DoD wipe and building a xmas tree.

Your making it sound like a DoD wipe turns a hard drive to mush.

[Michael B @ Dec 18th 2008 12:48PM]

Now I'd like to see it spin at 15,000 RPM

[Ogo @ Dec 18th 2008 12:48PM]

I built a SSD tree.... it is 1/5 the size and costs 10 times more.

[Mobius_1 @ Dec 18th 2008 1:09PM]

$3.90? Those are damn cheap SSDs you've got.

[Oli D @ Dec 18th 2008 3:13PM]

i built an OLED tree and, oh wait, that already got featured.

Now my jokes ruined, why not talk about quidditch?

[Baz @ Dec 18th 2008 3:38PM]

Dear Engadget,

Please try to be respectful and avoid using X-mas which offends many readers, just a tip. I don't recall the last time you used "Christmas," and it's starting to arouse suspicions of some kind of intolerance to the national holiday of Christmas that so many people celebrate. You even called it a "holiday tree"...is that like a New Year's Tree? Hanukka tree? Oh no, its a Thanksgiving Tree! Right.

If someone is too sensitive for the word Christmas or is offended by the "Christ" in Christmas (especially out here in the West), then they have some serious issues to worry about before complaining about political correctness. Just my 2cents.

Thanks-

[Farris @ Dec 18th 2008 4:55PM]

Andy? Is that you?

Yes?

Okay, now go away.

[LarryLarryLarry @ Dec 18th 2008 11:24PM]

No, it's a guy with some common sense. We've been calling it Christmas for the last 1500 years and there are still millions of Hindus, Bhuddists, Muslims and Taoists; still plenty of atheists and agnostics. The mere mention of a religious figure does not mean we are sacrificing our personal beliefs (if any).

There's no "safe" way to write Christmas. Whatever you type, it will piss someone off. So grow a pair and type the real thing It's like trying to find a nice code for typing "f*ck". It doesn't solve anything if you are beyond age 5.

[JBDragon @ Dec 19th 2008 2:16AM]

That's someone with to much time on his hand. I'm all for instant gratification. I get out the Sledge Hammer and give the Hard Drive a few swings. Trust me, you aren't going to read anything from it. Besides breaking things with a sledge hammer is a lot of fun. You spend all that time making that Tree, and by next year you've tossed that ugly thing into the trash.

[Repaxan @ Dec 20th 2008 1:45AM]

As an atheist, I applaud Engadget's use of Xmas instead of Christmas. I am not offended by the mention of religion, merely by the fact that apparently some people are angered at the expression of free speech.