Almost caught up on scrapping my drives

Almost caught up on scrapping the last batch of drives. Will be getting around 20 or 30 more systems in to scrap soon. I am lucky enough to have an small IT company give me all their scrap for free. It is a win win situation since my wife works there and she can make their lives miserable. Don't know if I have enough posts to upload pictures yet, but I will try.

why would your wife want to make her employer life's miserable?? you make it sound like blackmail or something.

Originally Posted by junksable

why would your wife want to make her employer life's miserable?? you make it sound like blackmail or something.

What no sense of humor in SC? My wife gets along well at work, it was a just a joke. Pretty sure everyone got it.

Originally Posted by matador

Uggh- I hate doing DVD drives. They're not too fun or high yield, but they reproduce like bunnies I swear.

I did about 40 of them already, and have about 60 to go. If they were all the same it would be a breeze, but those SCSI ones are a pain.

For me, drives of any kind are either in front of the tv work, or what can I work on for 20 minutes without making too much of a mess work. I usually keep a stack in the living room so if I'm bored but don't feel like taking every tool in my bag out, I can make some extra progress for a little bit. I can grab my harbor freight precision set, my mag tray, a few drives, the respective board bucket, and a shred bin. 2 minutes of gathering and 5 to clean up so it doesn't matter if I get 20 done or 2. The only other time I focus on drives is when I run out of everything else, which luckily is happening less and less every day.

Originally Posted by ragstoriches

What no sense of humor in SC? My wife gets along well at work, it was a just a joke. Pretty sure everyone got it.

as was mine....meant no harm

Originally Posted by matador

IMHO, the worst ones are the SATA drives. Not because of difficulty, but because there's almost no weight to the board in there. It hardly seems worth it on some of the newer drives.

As with anything in E-Waste, the old stuff has the highest yield, and the best hope with the newer stuff is reuse/resale in the form of more than scrap value.

I'll second that !

It's pretty slim pickins with the CD/ DVD's and the floppy drives are worth even less.

The thing is that they usually break down pretty quickly. Do the four screws and pop the board. Spread the left and right sides with a large straight blade screw driver. Throw the steel shell into the shred pile. Toss the (mostly) plastic part in the trash.

I found one good thing. The newer CD / DVD re-writeable drives make a nice upgrade for a core 2 machine. I know they say the core 2's
are obsolete but if they've got a higher end processor, lots of ram, and a DVD RW they're quite functional for most purposes.

Performance wise ... they will kick the stuffing out of a lot of the lower end laptops at Wal-Mart.

Partial Quote

Originally Posted by Scrappah

The thing is that they usually break down pretty quickly. Do the four screws and pop the board. Spread the left and right sides with a large straight blade screw driver. Throw the steel shell into the shred pile. Toss the (mostly) plastic part in the trash.

It's funny, if you scrap enough of the same items, we all end up doing it the same way. I often wondered if I do it the same way as other scrappers do, or am I doing it wrong. Now I know. It didn't take long for me to settle in to that same system. Thanks for posting it. Now I just wish I knew enough about computers so I could salvage more and scrap less.

Originally Posted by Scrappah

The thing is that they usually break down pretty quickly. Do the four screws and pop the board. Spread the left and right sides with a large straight blade screw driver. Throw the steel shell into the shred pile. Toss the (mostly) plastic part in the trash.

E-scrap isn't my favorite (I'd rather tend my chickens or cattle...LOL), but I'm glad to have another option available. Rather than pull the boards out of DVD/CD drives, the whole thing finds it's way into a car body and it's usually still in the PC. Car bodies, being a high percentage plastic, glass and fabric anyhow are good 'dumps' for such things. I'd guess that most yards don't mind that approach if not overdone. Printers and CRTs just LOVE cars.

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

I personally break down all my drives and pull the motors and reader head. That reader has a gold diode in it that's easy to remove. To each their own,

Thanks for the info. I'm trying to break down, sort, and reclaim as much as I can... mostly to learn.

Originally Posted by Randerson

But we don't want CRT's in our yard at all. we would tell someone that they need to take the CRT back or they wouldn't be able to sell the vehicle. A couple of printers we wouldn't mind as long as it's not over done.

Happy will be the day when the old heavy CRTs are history. Does anyone sell the new flatscreen monitor stands as aluminum or is it some other metal ? Thanks