Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need
suckerpinch12 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2022–2025
demo · intermediate · evergreen · 2022–2025 on HN
Tom7 (suckerpinch) builds and evaluates a series of absurd hard drives, including storage made from ping packets across the internet. The video accompanies his paper and mixes deep technical hacking with comedic storytelling.
HN treats it as a favorite example of silly but educational computer science, recommended often when threads touch odd storage hacks.
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12 comments from Hacker News
> harder drive Here's the direct YouTube link[0] I'd * HIGHLY* recommend this video to anyone here. It is exactly that fun silly computer science stuff where you also learn a shit ton. His channel is full of this stuff. Don't ask why, ask why not Is essentially the motto of his channel, and it is the best. Leads to lots of innovations and I think we all should encourage more of this kind of stuff. [0] ▶ this video
This idea is covered during the first part of one of my favorite Tom7 videos. If this comment is the first you are hearing of Tom7... strap in and enjoy: ▶ this video
As the other commenter said, everything on his channel is gold. Just the other day I was rewatching "Automated 3dfication of Nintendo games" link and "Harder Drives" ▶ this video
Suckerpunch did a video on “harder drives” where he implemented a block storage device by storing data in ping packets. It’s one of my all time favourite technical talks - his style is amazing, and he’s an incredible story teller. ▶ this video
His Harder Drive paper was amazing [ ▶ this video ], most especially the ending that considered a surprisingly common configuration of utterly useless, inefficient mass data storage that solves a problem nobody actually has.
That's a really nice view! Made me think of this map of IP addresses arranged as a Hilbert curve i saw in this Tom7 video: (the rest of the video is wildly good if you haven't seen it) ▶ this video
There's a fantastic associated YouTube video that talks through these too: ▶ this video It's a rabbit hole that had be fascinated for quite a while.
They're also useful for representing IPv4 space. Tom7 had a nice video where he does this after pinging the whole (IPv4) internet [0] [0] ▶ this video at about 6 minutes, though I recommend the whole thing.
Mine are "Harder Drives"[1], "ELO World"[2], and "Printable x86"[3] [1] ▶ this video [2] link [3] link
I love this! Reminds me of Harder Drive by Tom 7: ▶ this video It's better to go in unspoiled so I won't reveal any details.
See also Tom7's "Harder Drive" video. The whole thing is great, but the part relevant to the parent comment starts at 2:31. ▶ this video
Maybe it doesn't have a post of its own, but I found these esoteric storage methods greatly entertaining as well: ▶ this video