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Look at this incredible working hard drive Minecraft build

Minecraft's red stone allows you to do a lot of very, very clever things - like build a functioning hard drive. No, this isn't a joke.

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Minecraft has a lot more scope than surface explorations reveal. With redstone, you can build switches and simple logic circuits, and with that, well - you can make anything.

That's not to say it's easy, by any means. You need a good grasp of the fundamental principles you're exploiting, a grand vision, and a lot of patience. I suspect Imgurian smellytring has these qualities in droves, looking at this gallery of images.

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What you're looking at is a functional 1KB hard drive. "What in the hell?" You may exclaim. "How? Why?" Here's an explanation culled from the excellent commentary provided with the gallery:

"Redstone signals can pass through solid (opaque) blocks, but not clear blocks.

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"To store data on a computer, you must use binary code. Binary code is basically a way of storing data using only 1s and 0s. On my hard drive I use solid blocks to store a 1 and clear blocks to store a 0.

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"I use a LOT of pistons to push a bunch of blocks around in a loop. By switching between solid and clear blocks in this loop, I can store data. My hard drive has a spin speed of 1 byte per 8 redstone ticks."

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A command room gives the player the ability to control the hard drive. If you're interested in programming or basic computer architecture, figuring out precisely how this works wouldn't be a bad way to start.

If you haven't played Minecraft yet (what_ it's available on Mac, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, with PS4, Vita and Xbox One versions due soon.

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Brenna Hillier avatar

Brenna Hillier

Contributor

Based in Australia and having come from a lengthy career in the Aussie games media, Brenna worked as VG247's remote Deputy Editor for several years, covering news and events from the other side of the planet to the rest of the team. After leaving VG247, Brenna retired from games media and crossed over to development, working as a writer on several video games.

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