Scrap Hard Drive & PC Card Prices?

From: Tothwolf <tothwolf_at_concentric.net>
Date: Sat Jul 6 04:39:03 2002

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Marvin Johnston wrote:

> Anyone know what the current pricing is for scrap hard drives? I'm
> guessing I probably have 30 - 50 drives ranging from 5 1/4 to 3 1/2"
> drives that are non-working. What about scrap PC cards, and does age
> (gold content?) make a difference in what they bring? I am assuming
> the cards get bought for the gold scrap, but if there is more to it, I
> would appreciate hearing about it!

I've used such "scrap" drives to repair otherwise nonfunctional drives
before, so they are not completely useless. I doubt there is much in the
way of valuable materials in the drives, though for some of the early ATA
and RLL/MFM drives, some of the parts on the boards might be useful to
someone who tinkers with electronics. The stepper motors on the early
drives that didn't use a voice coil to move the heads, and the powerful
magnets in later drives might also be useful to someone who experiments.

I think you could probably get more cash for a pile of scrap lead or
lead-zinc batteries then you could get for a pile of old nonworking hard
drives...

I don't know about other folks here on the list, but I very often scrounge
(and sometimes buy) lots of old cards (PC/AT included) to upgrade and
maintain older systems. There really isn't much in the way of gold in
individual boards, so the real scrapers are going to be buying 1000s of
pounds of old boards, not just a few boards at a time...

-Toth
Received on Sat Jul 06 2002 - 04:39:03 BST