Completely off topic in terms of IT, however, slightly related. Having had an interest in radio controlled aircraft from childhood, I recently found myself browsing a few r/c hobby sites–it was on one of these sites that I caught mention of a cd-rom powered aircraft!  Well this was pretty intriguing so I started digging around on google and found out what was meant. I was surprised to find that people are using two components from broken/old cd-rom drives to build brushless electric motors for r/c aircraft. The process is extremely simple; the stator and rotor from the old cd-rom drive are stripped out–it doesn’t matter if the motor was damaged/not working as all of the windings are removed anyway.  With the addition of some small magnets, epoxy glue and the appropriate copper wire this can be re-engineered in to a powerful and very lightweight power unit.

This site gives lots of info. Magnets can be brought here. There
>are also lots of tips on building these motors found here.  So next time you go to throw away that old CD-ROM or hard disk, just think you may be able to recycle parts of it or at least get a few pounds from someone who wants to buy it on ebay 🙂