First .... what a great post !
If it's okay i would offer some opinions on hard drives & memory.
1: When salvaging them from a computer treat them gently. Disconnect the cables carefully so that you don't damage the pins on the logic board. Always place the drive with the circuit board facing up on the bench because the little parts that are soldered on to the board are easily damaged.
2: The general consensus is that there isn't as much of a market for the IDE drives as there once was. They're mostly obsolete now. Probably better to just scrap them out than fiddle with tying to ship them to a buyer.
3: There have been around three generations of SATA HDD's. The oldest transferred data at a rate of 1.5 gb/sec. The next generation at a rate of 3.0 gb/ sec. The current generation standard is 6 gb / sec.
They are not all alike even though they may appear to be the same.
4: There is a niche market for HDD logic boards out there. Some tech companies deal with hard drive repair. This is a very specialized area of knowledge. If you read what they have to say they will tell you that most of the time a repair can be accomplished without the need of opening the case in a clean room.
To put it another way .... most hard drive failures are not mechanical but rather due to a failure of the logic board. Guess who might be looking for a used circuit board ?
The nice thing is that the boards weigh almost nothing and cost little to ship. The downside is the boards are very sensitive to sources of high electromagnetic discharge. That source could be almost anywhere so the best thing is to ship it in an anti static bag and carefully pad it.
5: It's seldom that a hard drive that was pulled from salvage won't at least spin up. If they are defective they usually do the click of death. Occasionally you get read / write errors. There was one generation of HDD's from a major manufacturer that had head problems due to an experimental coating used on the platters but they power up allright as well.
If you do find one that just won't power up it probably got zapped somehow. Check the power supply and motherboard for bad capacitors caused by a power surge. It might have gotten through and fried the logic board on the hard drive as well. With a little bit of detective work you can often figure out why a hard drive died.
6: Do the right thing. Always wipe & test a hard drive before shipping to any buyer.
It seems to be more or less the same with memory modules. Most appear to have been working at the time the pc's they were installed in were retired from service. Ground yourself against something metal when pulling them. Handle them carefully. Keep them separated from one another. Ship them in an anti static bag to protect them from errant electromagnetic discharges on the trip to your buyer. There may be fewer that arrive D.O.A.
Just a few thoughts for whatever they might be worth.
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