Old hard drive components become medium for unique artwork

Published Dec. 19, 2009
By Capt. Larry van der Oord
386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

SOUTHWEST ASIA -- When computer hard drives go bad, the 386th Expeditionary Communications Squadron here typically strips them of all pertinent data and sends them to the explosive ordnance disposal unit in the 386th Expeditionary Civil Engineering Squadron for destruction. However, recently one 386th ECS systems administrator has found a unique use for those worn out hard drives.

Miguel Rivera has been using the pieces from old hard drives to create a collection of distinctive sculptures. So far he has constructed two different cars, a fat-boy motorcycle and a robot.

"I just started making them just a few months ago," said Mr. Rivera, who has worked in the 386th ECS for the past five years. "We had a growing pile of hard drives just lying around the shop. One day I decide to take one apart since I'd never looked at the guts up close before. That's pretty much how it all started."

His first sculpture, a car-like vehicle, was built over one full weekend from standard 3.5-inch hard drives. It took a total of 33 hard drives to make, including 32 gutted for the discs and one for the main body.

"The first one wasn't really difficult to put together since I didn't have to modify much other than the cover," said Mr. Rivera. "Everything else just screwed on."

His second sculpture was another miniature car, and the difficulty of construction was very similar to the first, said Mr. Rivera. His third piece, a fat-boy motorcycle, was a bit more difficult.

"I just couldn't get parts to mix well at first to reflect the look I wanted. It took many hours of taking apart pieces and putting them back together to get it right," said Mr. Rivera. "From start to finish I think the bike took me three full weekends. I added a pair of dog tags given to me by a Navy chaplain as a tribute to our selfless troops."

Mr. Rivera said his favorite sculpture is the robot he built.

"I was quite humbled about how the robot turned out. In fact, I'm not sure I can out do this one," he said. "Building it went surprisingly smooth, it took me about two full weeks to make. I didn't run into any major obstacles other than making the arms angle as they do. For the most part the pieces just seemed to go together as if they were pre-made from a model kit."

Mr. Rivera's robot sculpture has a total of 14 laptop hard drives with 18 additional discs from gutted hard drives and spare parts. It allowed him to show off some internal hard drive pieces he wasn't able to incorporate into his earlier creations.

Mr. Rivera displays all his creations on his desk at the office, but his work is also drawing some outside attention. All four sculptures were recently featured on the Wired Magazine website.

"Miguel is an outstanding member of the 386th ECS team. He is a true mission enabler," said Maj. Roy Rockwell, 386th ECS commander. "He applies the same creativity in solving communication challenges as he applies in creating his very unique sculptures. Our squadron mantra is "Comm Rocks" and it is people like Miguel who make it rock every day."

Mr. Rivera is currently working on a fifth sculpture and plans to unveil the "hard drive helicopter" in the next few weeks.