Currently your comment, which adds nothing to the discussion except a simple spelling correction, has more upvotes than the parent. Sign of the times for HN?
Not to say spelling corrections are never useful, I think they often are, but I don't understand the mindset that upvotes them over comments that actually participate in the discussion.
and from the caption it sounds like it actually did that to itself which seems impossible unless maybe the platter was made defectively in the first place ... ? (note it was an "old" 40gb drive - also looks like 2.5 inch)
I am not sure how they broke that disc into so many pieces though, in my experience they are incredibly strong and rigid.
The discs make great wind chimes too.
Harbor Freight has a $3 security bit set if you have drives with special screws.