What metal is a hard drive made of?

T

tmarshall

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 19, 2003
Messages
395
I have several drives that are shat.

Someone told me they were aluminum.

Is this so?

I am thinking of taking the controller board off them, and recycling the hard drives.
 
I don't know.. interesting question though... I know the metal is polished real well though, i don't know is aluminum can get that shiny.. maybe it's aluminum and something else??
 
Aaaaaaaaan dthennnn?

No and then....what is a hard drive made of?

That Google linky wasn't all that awesome.

Can I recycle these for their aluminum or not?
 
tmarshall said:
Aaaaaaaaan dthennnn?

No and then....what is a hard drive made of?

That Google linky wasn't all that awesome.

Can I recycle these for their aluminum or not?
Click to expand...



...

It said: "Traditionally platters are made of a light alluminum alloy and coated with a magnetizable material such as a ferrite compound" and "Newer technology uses glass and/or ceramic platters because they can be made thinner and also because they are more efficient at resisting heat."

So.............................................

Take it to where ever you go to recycle it, and ask them, "Can i recycle this?" lol.
 
Yes young grasshopper. But you see I have more than one.

So I should load up my trunk, go to the recycling center, and say "Yo! Diss shit werf anyting?"

I'll just call one tomorrow. Thought someone here had the answer.
 
tmarshall said:
Yes young grasshopper. But you see I have more than one.

So I should load up my trunk, go to the recycling center, and say "Yo! Diss shit werf anyting?"

I'll just call one tomorrow. Thought someone here had the answer.
Click to expand...


LOL!!!.. yeah that is probably the best thing to do..
 
Recycling centers and laws differ from place to place. Especially when it come to computer components. Most places that recycle components require a fee from what I've found. (Cause of the stuff in the circuit boards, mercury and what not.)

I really doubt that just any 'ole recycling center is going to take the platters from a HD.

At least reuse the magnets. Those are always useful. (Just dont get your fingers caught between them. :D They hurt!)
 
tmarshall said:
Yes young grasshopper. But you see I have more than one.

So I should load up my trunk, go to the recycling center, and say "Yo! Diss shit werf anyting?"

I'll just call one tomorrow. Thought someone here had the answer.
Click to expand...

Scrap aluminum is worth $0.50-$0.60 per pound. A drive weighs about a pound or so. So you're looking at $2-3. Hardly seems worth the work to strip them and drive them to a recycle center.
 
pigster said:
Scrap aluminum is worth $0.50-$0.60 per pound. A drive weighs about a pound or so. So you're looking at $2-3. Hardly seems worth the work to strip them and drive them to a recycle center.
Click to expand...

If I only had 6.

The thing is I have over 60!
 
How about you take the top lids off of all of them, and mount the drives on the wall to create a nerdy piece of art?
 
xonik said:
How about you take the top lids off of all of them, and mount the drives on the wall to create a nerdy piece of art?
Click to expand...

hehe yeah!
With 60, i'm sure you could do lots of wicked modding with the parts...
 
JackieChanIsGOD said:
hehe yeah!
With 60, i'm sure you could do lots of wicked modding with the parts...
Click to expand...

Nah, I'd leave all the discs on my desk and call them my "Death Discs"...anytime anyone unwanted enters the room, they'd get a disc flung at them :)
 
you're not going to be able to recycle harddrives at your local center. The only way people that care enough and have the ability to are harddrive manufacturers.
 
truffle00 said:
Nah, I'd leave all the discs on my desk and call them my "Death Discs"...anytime anyone unwanted enters the room, they'd get a disc flung at them :)
Click to expand...


lmao
 
I know IBM drives used aluminum disks that were coated with nickel since I used to polish the platters a couple of years ago. Also some of IBM drives used glass with some kind of coating on them.
 
You might need to take out all of the circuit boards and the platters for a place to accept them. If it's worth your time, strip them down, recycle the bare Al frames and take the rest of the parts to a place that accepts that stuff. My local landfill has a checkpoint at the front where you unload electronics, appliances, scrap metal and recyclables for free, and then you have to pay by weight to toss whatever's left. Or, if it's not worth your time to strip 60 hard drives, just take them whole and let someone else deal with them.
 
Dude take the platters out of em & make wind chimes from em & sell em on E-GAY. Then recycle the cases. You could then make twice as much money.
 
Wiseguy2001 said:
Take the magnets out!
Click to expand...

indeed

as csims pointed out dismount the circuit board, pop the top, remove the rare earth magents (great fun watch your fingers exceptionally strong) and recycle the case which is very likely aluminum, though the platters may not be, if not they make classy coasters :p

I save up dismounted circuit boards till a cardboard box is full and then take them to the hard to recycle center for proper disposal, they are just loaded with lead, and truely toxic heavy metals, you really really dont want in a landfill where thay might leech into the ground water ;)

(computers as a whole are getting somewhat better with more environmentally friendly materials but are still currently a serious hazard, older computers contain 5 to 8 pounds of lead as well as mercury, arsenic, cadmium, beryllium, and a host of other heavy metals and toxic chemicals.
http://www.toxicdude.com/GetTheFacts/
http://www.toxicdude.com/Uploads/toxicsinside.pdf

Lead
Beryllium
Hexavalent Chromium
Mercury
Barium
Phosphor
Cadmium
Brominated Flame Retardants
 
I let my wife have at them.

We now have a TON of refrigerator magnets, and some cool parts I may implement into a uber-mod! :eek:
 
Rip the platters out, drill a hole in the side and put a string loop in them. Now you have some bootleg gangsta christmas tree ornaments :D
 
old functional HDDs are a great practice tool for modding windows into HDDs
better to kill them than a valuable HDD
 
I'm reviving that old thread, since nobody has really answered the OP, and I have the same question.

What material is a hard drive casing made of ? Not the platters, not the magnets, not the heads, but the cast casing, clearly the biggest and heaviest part (at least on a 3,5" HDD).

Thanks
 
tmarshall said:
Yes young grasshopper. But you see I have more than one.

So I should load up my trunk, go to the recycling center, and say "Yo! Diss shit werf anyting?"

I'll just call one tomorrow. Thought someone here had the answer.
Click to expand...

DOH you would most likely have to pay them to take it. When we got rid of old computers at HP, they paid by the truck, you filled up a container that they took away and then shipped it off to china or somewhere. I highly doubt you could get money for aluminum. Copper on the other hand is accepted anywhere but is also like 5 times as expensive. The smelting cost of both are almost equal.. When I wanted to get rid of my old car I had to pay them $100 to come take it and that was like over a 1 ton of American made metal.. I would have just left it on the road side but my friend got like a $2000 ticket for them to take it away.
 
This was maybe 15 or so years ago? But I helped someone scrap a totaled Toyota for a few hundred bucks (I think can't remember) with the towing costs included.
 
Google shreds the drives then send them to be recycled. Shredding mainly for security I believe.
 
Ice Czar said:
indeed

as csims pointed out dismount the circuit board, pop the top, remove the rare earth magents (great fun watch your fingers exceptionally strong) and recycle the case which is very likely aluminum, though the platters may not be, if not they make classy coasters :p

I save up dismounted circuit boards till a cardboard box is full and then take them to the hard to recycle center for proper disposal, they are just loaded with lead, and truely toxic heavy metals, you really really dont want in a landfill where thay might leech into the ground water ;)

(computers as a whole are getting somewhat better with more environmentally friendly materials but are still currently a serious hazard, older computers contain 5 to 8 pounds of lead as well as mercury, arsenic, cadmium, beryllium, and a host of other heavy metals and toxic chemicals.
http://www.toxicdude.com/GetTheFacts/
http://www.toxicdude.com/Uploads/toxicsinside.pdf

Lead
Beryllium
Hexavalent Chromium
Mercury
Barium
Phosphor
Cadmium
Brominated Flame Retardants
Click to expand...

i asume that figure was counting a CRT monitor in that equation so most of that weight for an average old PC was just the stupid CRT :p
 
limitedaccess said:
This was maybe 15 or so years ago? But I helped someone scrap a totaled Toyota for a few hundred bucks (I think can't remember) with the towing costs included.
Click to expand...

Yea it was a while ago, But that Toyota might have contained valuable scraps even if totalled. Mine was a pontiac lemans and mostly just steel with no valuables in it. I thought he wanted to give me 100 bucks.. so I extended my hand and he said you have to pay me first and I go doh! I had the idea of trying to dump it in the lake but didnt know if some serial number could be traced back to me.. I seen cars in the middle off the woods but this one was so heavy, I doubt even in its prime it would have gotten there. I know companies pay big bucks to recycle their old computers, they never get any money for them. But some like dell offers free pickup of old computers to dispose. I doubt they make any money on them either. better than it all ending up in land fills.
 
AlienTech said:
Yea it was a while ago, But that Toyota might have contained valuable scraps even if totalled. Mine was a pontiac lemans and mostly just steel with no valuables in it. I thought he wanted to give me 100 bucks.. so I extended my hand and he said you have to pay me first and I go doh! I had the idea of trying to dump it in the lake but didnt know if some serial number could be traced back to me.. I seen cars in the middle off the woods but this one was so heavy, I doubt even in its prime it would have gotten there. I know companies pay big bucks to recycle their old computers, they never get any money for them. But some like dell offers free pickup of old computers to dispose. I doubt they make any money on them either. better than it all ending up in land fills.
Click to expand...

Scrap metal recycling (including vehicles) can vary quite a bit from state to state. Where I live currently, if you can push, pull or drag your car into the scrap yard, they'll give you around $200 for it. It peaked around $400 a couple of years ago.

Aluminum was $0.70/lb the last time I cashed it in. I've actually got a fair bit piling up again. There is a place out here that takes circuit boards. It was paying $0.50/lb the last time I checked. The problem is that it is a bit of a haul to take things there, so I often just scrap them on free electronic waste recycling days because I run out of storage space before I collect enough to make the trip to the scrapyard worthwhile.

Copper goes for a good amount around here as well. I don't bother to strip the insulation to get the best price, but bundles of wires from wiring harnesses, PSUs, etc. pay over $1.00/lb on a good day. Bare copper wire was around $2.25 and plumbing copper was pretty close to that.

Really, you have to ask yourself how much your time is worth. If you figure out how many hours it will take you to strip PCs and components down to their relatively bare elements, then compare to the scrap prices in your area, it may be worthwhile. Also, keep in mind that scrap yards will typically give you the best price for really clean scrap (by this I mean stripped down as much as possible and organized by metal type in separate containers) and that there are other fringe perks to going to the scrap yard (I got several rolls of 12-3 electrical wiring for slightly over the scrap price as well as the occasional 42U server rack for $50, etc).
 
Since companies have to pay so much to scrap stuff, a whole bunch of these surplus companies went up around silicon valley, They take these stuff and sell them individually. I learnt most about computers and stuff from those. They were great before but they were more and more getting greedy. Stuff which was recent cost more than new and other things were expensive for being junk. Like all these old hard drives of under 100GB going for like $40-$50 etc.. When you can buy a 2TB new one for like $60.. Also no warranty that they would work etc.. Everyone is getting too greedy, went to an auction for a company that was being liquidated and they wanted more than new. Some chairs and tables went for fair prices, nothing like cheap prices.. Then what they cant sell they scrap.. WHY not sell ALL at reasonable rates????? As it is all as is with no warranty and you dont know if they work or not. Think there are just too many marginal buyers who keep these guys in business and occasionally get the dupes who pay more than retail.

Now I wish I never seen these places. I would have been alot happier, richer, had not wasted so much time getting rid of all the junk etc etc etc, I can tell people yea I had hundreds of hard drives. Getting rid of those was far more difficult.. Breaking these things down is DANGEROUS.. You can cut and scape yourself all the time. Some chassis have very sharp edges where you can slice yourself really bad and would need stitches. Glass platters can break into extra sharp pieces that can easily slice you. Be careful is all I can say.. Not a hobby for the clumsy or those in a hurry..
 
There is a bit of a slowdown at work and my boss, who earns the equivalent of a 6 figures salary in the US, thinks it's a good idea to look into the trash at work for metal to sell. At first it was copper wire, mainly very thick electrical wire from decommissioned back-up systems (up to one inch thick) so it was somewhat worth it, but now he's in desperate mode, using a hammer on printers and the like to see what he can get, pretty ridiculous.

So I was wondering if HDDs could make the cut, and if it's aluminum then yes he'll be interested. He'll make a mess of it that's for sure, and I'll have clients on the phone asking what's all that noise around me...
 
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