Scrap Hard Drive & PC Card Prices?

From: Marvin Johnston <marvin_at_rain.org>
Date: Sat Jul 6 09:30:38 2002

I was offered about $0.15 per pound for the hard drives a while ago and
$1.00 per pound for the circuit boards. Since I probably have about 500
- 1000 pounds of drives and cards, it is something worth looking into
:). Right now, this excess is too much of a distraction and slows down
getting other stuff done. Additionally, I've been throwing out stuff
(non computer related) and saving the gold connectors, gold plated
boards, etc. without any idea of what it might be worth. Time to find
out :).

Tothwolf wrote:
>
> 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 - 09:30:38 BST