Hard Drive Cover Makeup

[Doombot1]

Hello!

My father owns a business dealing with online feedback. He moved his office a while ago from in the middle of a small town to the middle of Chicago, and with the move, he decided to transform his largely server-based company to one based largely off of the cloud. As such, he had about 100 old HDDs that he was going to shred. Instead, he gave them to me to drill press (Confidential and they were all old - <100Gb mainly). I also own an aluminum forge at my house. I know for a fact that the main body is largely aluminum, as are the disks themselves. However, the covers are a different story (the thin part with the label on it). They feel different then normal aluminum, but I have read from some sources that they MIGHT be made of it. As I want to melt them down as well, I was wondering if anyone knew the approximate makeup of the covers. As different companies make different products, I'll go with Seagate, as those are the most common.

Thank You!

(Tl;Dr: I want to melt down old HDD covers - what are their chemical makeups?)

 

[Doombot1]

Actually-if you know the makeup of the disks (approximate), that would be nice as well-thanks!

 

[Solandri]

I suspect the rare earth magnets inside the HDDs are worth more than the aluminum. A similar sized rare earth magnet costs about $2-$3, and each HDD has two of them. While aluminum is about 70 cents/lb and each drive weighs about 1 lb.

The problem is it would take a lot of time to extract all the magnets from 100 HDDs, and they're a bit weird shaped so might not be worth as much as round or rectangular magnets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKzPt18aE_0
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-separate-the-Magnets-from-an-old-harddisk/?ALLSTEPS

This video says the exterior casing is stainless steel, and describes some of the other valuable parts (supposedly the PCB is the most valuable).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVrmscPoPbY

 

[Doombot1]

I suspect the rare earth magnets inside the HDDs are worth more than the aluminum. A similar sized rare earth magnet costs about $2-$3, and each HDD has two of them. While aluminum is about 70 cents/lb and each drive weighs about 1 lb.

The problem is it would take a lot of time to extract all the magnets from 100 HDDs, and they're a bit weird shaped so might not be worth as much as round or rectangular magnets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKzPt18aE_0
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-separate-the-Magnets-from-an-old-harddisk/?ALLSTEPS

This video says the exterior casing is stainless steel, and describes some of the other valuable parts (supposedly the PCB is the most valuable).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVrmscPoPbY

 

[Doombot1]

Thank you! Funny-i actually took the magnets out of the large majority of the drives (didn't have great screwdrivers so it took a while)-I made a wonderful screwdriver rack with about thirty of them. Otherwise, I think that the covers are largely aluminum-turns out (after a bit of work), they are two layers glued together that can be relatively easily separated. (The reason I was skeptical was when you drop both layers while still glued together, it doesn't sound like normal aluminum). As well, I'm fairly sure the bottom casing is actually aluminum-it's big, so I've tried "re-sizing" it with bolt cutters, and it's definitely easier to cut than steel (also it's non magnetic).

Thank you again!

 

[Solandri]

Stainless steel is also non-magnetic. Or at least weakly magnetic enough that a refrigerator magnet won't stick to it, just like with aluminum. Since it sounds like you have a machine shop, you can try putting a grinder to it. Steel should throw off sparks, while aluminum shouldn't.

 

[Doombot1]

Stainless steel is also non-magnetic. Or at least weakly magnetic enough that a refrigerator magnet won't stick to it, just like with aluminum. Since it sounds like you have a machine shop, you can try putting a grinder to it. Steel should throw off sparks, while aluminum shouldn't.

How funny - I actually don't own a machine shop! I do have my own "little" arsenal of tools in my basement though. I do have a grinder - would stainless steel stick to the neodymium magnets from the drives? It's a bit easier to test that then to plug in the grinder and all. Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

Extract the magnets, then toss the rest into a drive shredder.
From the confetti, you can separate the individual metal types.