16.
I know the school's techie well.
Each month they throw out 20 or so drives, because kids take out the rubber band, teachers use them as cup holders, or CDs explode inside them. They're all good drives, except with trashed internals. The sleds are usually always intact.
So one afternoon I just had a word to him, and he doesn't mind. The way we both see it is it's better than letting the drives go to waste, because there's plenty of electronics in there.
I keep the optics and some of the diodes, a friend gets the circuits and another gets diodes too.
What really got me though is two days before I spoke to him he threw about 20 out. :gun:
I'll be happy to drop you a few diodes in the mail if you wanted. Surely, between the two of us (me and that friend) we can't asplode that many diodes*.
*We claimed our first victim a few days ago. Direct drive, died after 10 minutes.