What is the breakdown of computer hard drives?

Originally Posted by scalemomma

I've heard the platters are platinum. I salvage the magnets out of them and scrap the rest as aluminum and tin. I appreciate any and all input....thanks!

The platters are *platinum plated* There is a buyer on the forum who buys them.

Much has been written on this subject, if you look at the bottom of each thread there is a list of related threads. Mike.

Originally Posted by scalemomma

I've heard the platters are platinum. I salvage the magnets out of them and scrap the rest as aluminum and tin. I appreciate any and all input....thanks!

Here you go, the motors can be sold as alum. or as a motor. The bottom cases are cast alum. The top is alum sheet, or SS or sometime alum with a steel plate glued on. You will get the rare top that is plain steel.

http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/elect...-platters.html

http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/disma...ts-bucket.html

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

Here you go, the motors can be sold as alum. or as a motor.

Glad you mentioned both. At my yard they pay more for old sheet aluminum than for motors, so I just leave them on.

I was separating and tossing them in the motor bucket for awhile too. Mech's post made m rethink it. 50 cents verses 30 cents..

Originally Posted by scalemomma

Sweet! Can you hook me up with them?

http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/scrap...nets-more.html

However, I never see anyone talking about the small gold plated bit inside the actual read eye in all HDD's. I have found this same small gold plated part in every type of disk reader, ETC ... CD drives, DVD Drives, Blu-Ray and HDD's.

So my question is... Is there anyone else out there that collects these for a later sale.

I have been saving bushels of the "arms" but I've yet to see any gold plating in a HD, could you enlighten me with a pic. please.

Originally Posted by scalemomma

I've heard the platters are platinum. I salvage the magnets out of them and scrap the rest as aluminum and tin. I appreciate any and all input....thanks!

I found this on one of the computer, or refining forums; Author unknown as 3 or 4 different people have claimed to have written it.

It's taken me just about forever, but I've finally found some way to answer the simple question "How much platinum is in these hard drive platters showing up on Ebay for salvage?" "The Chemistry of Computing" over at extremetech.com (article2/0,2845,1946290,00.asp) has all the facts: surface layer of Co-Cr-Pt alloy is 40-50% platinum, and the layer is ~30 nm thick. I don't have a hard drive platter in front of me, so let's just forget about the hole in the middle for a moment, so one platter from a 3.5" disk is 3.14*(3.5/2)^2=10.4 sq inches or 67.2 cm^2 ... times the 30 nm thickness (3x10^-6 cm) is 2.0x10-4 cm^3, times the (optimistic) 50% Pd, times the density of Pt (21.45 g/cm^3) and I estimate one platter has at most 2.2 mg Pt. As of 08/29/2008, the platinum spot price was 1470.00 USD per troy ounce, or more usefully, 4.73 cents per miligram. So, congratulations, you've just spent an hour of time and three cents of chemicals (just a guess, probably high) to reclaim 10 cents of platinum, probably still contaminated with cobalt and chromium depending on your recovery method. I hope you bought a whole bunch of platters cheap and rode a bike to pick them up because I doubt you'll be paying for gas let alone the shipping with the platinum. Or hope those early hard drives used a much thicker layer....

http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/elect...e-platter.html