Local yard's policy change on harddrives

I've been looking for a local yard that would buy intact harddrives without boards. A couple of months ago found a yard that quoted something like $0.20/lb on those. Contacted them again this morning asking for their current price. They responded saying that now they CHARGE $5/drive for data destruction and attached some sort of document describing how identity theft is becoming a bigger problem every day and how anyone in possession of other people's data can be held liable for data leakage if it occurs etc etc.

Have you recently seen similar rule changes at your local yard or wherever you sold HDDs to?

why not just strip the drives/
- the casings are cast aluminium- as far as i know and throw the rest in with ur shred.
i get much more value by doing that
show the yard the drives have been stripped- nothing inside

thats what we do here
although nobody seems to worry about ID theft etc

I would bet they are charging as result of an insurance policy they have to cover them from data theft. I'm fishing from the top of my head here, but I think the federal government can fine a company up to a 100,000 for EACH person's contact information when it is stolen. We take security and data loss / theft very seriously at work.

For practical purposes it would be enough to nick one side of the contacts of one of the IC's on the logic board. That renders the drive inoperable. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to solder in a new IC ? An electronics tech with the right tools might be able to do it.

If you wanted to take it up a notch you could remove the green board. You could put in a green board from a donor drive but it wouldn't work. Each board is specifically "tuned" to that particular hard drive at the factory.You could send the hard drive out to the manufacturer and have that board "tuned" but it generally costs between 1000.00 - 3500.00 per hard drive to have it done.

You can break the drive down. Once the platters are out of the drive it's unlikely that anyone could retrieve the info on them.They're not like a CD. There's no such thing as a universal platter reader.Good for anyone that could invent such a thing because you could make millions in doing legitimate data recovery on crashed hard drives.

Just an opinion, but i think they're overreacting out of fear.

On the other hand .... there's money to be made from CAPITALIZING on that fear by selling certified data destruction. ;)

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Originally Posted by Scrappah

For practical purposes it would be enough to nick one side of the contacts of one of the IC's on the logic board. That renders the drive inoperable. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to solder in a new IC ? An electronics tech with the right tools might be able to do it.

If you wanted to take it up a notch you could remove the green board. You could put in a green board from a donor drive but it wouldn't work. Each board is specifically "tuned" to that particular hard drive at the factory.You could send the hard drive out to the manufacturer and have that board "tuned" but it generally costs between 1000.00 - 3500.00 per hard drive to have it done.

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Yep, I am talking about the drives that had their logic boards removed

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Originally Posted by Scrappah

Just an opinion, but i think they're overreacting out of fear.

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Most likely, or maybe they got sued by someone who claimed that they leaked their data.

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Originally Posted by msmoorad

why not just strip the drives/
- the casings are cast aluminium- as far as i know and throw the rest in with ur shred.

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This is an option although it is sometimes time consuming e.g. when the screws are rusty

I was going to say, maybe they got burned, an now as another said for insurance purposes their CYA'ing it with the paperwork.

Maybe just greedy.

You find out let us know. ;) An no, no change in my yard, but i don't take them full HDs. All they get is the casing.

Sirscrapalot - Thank you. - Someone today who I held a door for..I was shocked.

Ummm ... I dunno .... what i'm seeing is that the insurance companies are becoming a law unto themselves. They're gettin' really pushy.

1: They're going on people's property when they're not there and doing safety inspections.

2: If they see trees that might fall into the house they demand that they be cut down at a cost to the homeowner.

3: If they see roofing shingles that are starting to curl up at the edges a little they demand that the homeowner foot the cost of replacing the roof.

4: They've shown up at the shops of a couple of places where i worked and requested changes to meet their safety standard. Nevermind that the state OSHA was coming through at least once a year.

5: It used to be that you could go pick the scrapyard if you needed some good used steel for one of your projects but you can't do that anymore. There's the whole liability thing now. ( And guess who has to pay if there's a lawsuit.)

I could on and on ............

The thing is that there's a big move in the insurance industry to reduce their payouts on claims -or- shift costs onto someone else. If something bad happens once they look for ways of preventing it from happening again. Doesn't matter if it's a real problem or not because it's their customer that has to pay the cost of making the changes.

All those suits sitting up their in their ivory towers are a pretty fearful bunch. It's always safety, safety, safety, prevention,prevention,prevention with them.

They don't realize that life is a dangerous place to be .... and that you'll never get out alive ! :lol:

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Originally Posted by ilyaz

This is an option although it is sometimes time consuming e.g. when the screws are rusty

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If you get a screw that strips just drill -or- grind the head off. They're pretty small so it doesn't take long.

If your yard is that goofy, do this:
Separate the circuit board, they sell for a good buck
Drill several holes through the drive: it is then effectively destroyed
YES, I know that CIA agents from outer space could possibly recover the data..... Get over that idea.
You could also break down the drive more: that way you can remove the platters and deface them: it's your choice

Yea, once drilled, or bent or damaged, from what I understand it's very hard to get the info back. I mean hell this past winter when mine went down, after researching getting the info off it, it turned out to be way to **** expensive. An mine wasn't any of the above. Sure the NCIS an CSI and Law & Order, etc make it look easy...but is it really that easy? I don't think so.

I'm leaning to them being greedy to be honest. They had some one ask about a C.O.D an figured they could make money off of everyone that brings them in whole. I mean think about..whats it pay to drop a whole HD off at the yard? Not very much unless you get some kind of super rate on a hard drive. So they pay out the 2 bucks..charge you 5..they make profit, you lose money.

I'd rather take the word of a computer expert like Spin an the other folks here, over any scrap yard trying to advise me on computers, or computer security. No offense to the yard owners here on our forum, but not all yards are honest. Ya'll know this tho, just like not all scrappers are meth addicts who run around ripping copper out of little old ladies homes in the dead of night.

I'm voting Greed over CYA Insurance purposes. They see an easy way to make cash, an do it. Can't blame them really, I can understand it, but don't have to like it.

I had someone ask me about this today, as she was concerned about info on the towers she has. I told her how I go about making them unrecoverable, she thought about it, told me she'd see me next week with the towers. I even offered her the platters back to dispose of on her own if she wanted. Heh, she said my method was ok with her.

I could've charged her, but hey...I'd rather her spread the word to her friends an family. :) Sometimes not making that extra buck does pay off in more profitable ways.

Good luck with the yard, I'd like to know their answer if you ever ask them.

Sirscrapalot - I'm wordy like a dictionary tonight!

I have dabbled in data recovery before, on personal drives and recovering as a business. One thing is for sure...Even a single pass wipe is difficult to recover. There is an algorithm at work that tries to piece together strings of data that while the partition says is all zeros actually reports as strong or weak zeros. The software is expensive, hacked versions aren't any better and you need a serious machine to recover data in any quantity. No videos, maybe pictures and internet cache...that's it. Eight pass supposedly can be recovered by supercomputers and special equipment that involves installing the platters on a special drive. Recovering impinged (water damaged) or fire damaged drives where the plating has discolored on modern high density drives is absolutely impossible. The act of drilling a drive bends the platter enough it cannot be recovered by any means except electron microscope...and how many hackers do you think have one? Like sir said, the cia...dia, maybe the fbi could recover an physically damaged platter to even a tiny degree (literally threads of a sheet).

I offwe physical deconstruction of drives at the place of business for the customer, one of two ways, I take them apart until the platters are out OR smash them with a sledgehammer or ax outside.

I just drill a few 5mm holes through the drive. Including one through the board. Only takes 30 seconds in the drill press with a cobalt bit.

To the OP, this is how the places in my area operate...

If a random guy, think non-scrapper, comes in and has a hard drive he wants destroyed then the yard charges 5$ to do that for him. He can INSTEAD sell it for $0.65/lb but if he sells it, he has no say so over what happens to it. It might get shredded OR it might get wiped and resold. EITHER way there is a responsibility on the yard to protect the person's data because he gave the drive to them; the only decision is whether or not the consumer wants to risk it being resold of wants to pay 5$ for the piece of mind knowing it got shredded right in front of him.

That was for a random customer though, for recyclers this fee is a non-issue, it does not apply to us.

The responsibility is on you as the initial recycler to wipe, demagnetize, drill, disassemble, blow up, shoot with a tank, urinate, or WHATEVER it takes to get the drive clean and clear. The consumer gave it to you so it's on you. As for us, we disassemble all of our drives, it the safest and we feel it has the highest return for our model. We have NEVER charged a customer and will never charge a customer, actually, we pay for them. You should be paid as well.

Had a trip to my local yard the other day where I take my lower grade stuff like wire, alum. The recently started accepting desktop power supplies. Still refuse to take laptop and other power bricks or computer fans. But I took my harddrives to them and they agreed to take them at $0.15/lb. Good enough for me.

Looks like they are might be slowly getting more and more into e-scrap. They accept complete towers at $0.20/lb and ship them elsewhere to get processed.

As I was typing this it occurred to me that I made a mistake of not talking to them more to find out where they send those towers. Maybe I can offer them a better deal, although this might mean moving my operation out of my basement