Old Orange/Brown Hard Drive Platters

I know the general consensus is that most 3.5" and smaller hard drive platters aren't worth trying to process for PM, but I was wondering if older orange/brown 5.25" drive platters have any PM coatings... and if so, what PM? I've tried websearching info on these, but I haven't had any luck finding info regarding the properties of these platters, other than having aluminum as the base. I currently have 18 of these platters.

I also have 700+ of the more modern 3.5" and 200+ of the 2.5" drive platters in case those amounts might be significant enough to attempt any PM recovery.

Anyways... Thanks guys!

The general thinking is platters are a waste of time.

iron oxide platers.

fun discription.

http://electronicstechnician.tpub.com/14091/css/Disk-Platters-278.htm

Good for wind chimes.

Eric

Don't waste your time mate. Honestly.

Jon

Thanks guys. I figured as much that these too would be a waste of time for any PM processing attempts, but thought I'd ask just to be sure. I'll just keep theses stacked with my other modern platters for melting into aluminum ingots (minus any glass ones) later on.

I've seen them sold on eBay at times for are projects for way more than Al scrap. If you take the time to remove them might want to go that way.

Eric

etack said:

I've seen them sold on eBay at times for are projects for way more than Al scrap. If you take the time to remove them might want to go that way.

Eric

Click to expand...

I've seen that too, plus with modern platters. Given the saturation of so many sellers right now, not sure if I'll attempt that route or not. I'm actually developing a growing itch to start making my own metal bars via forges for investment stacking of later on. I don't deal with scrap yards much except for really cruddy Cu and Al, plus accumulated Fe material. I'm even stashing known mostly Ni material like Mu-Metal lol

The IT manager at my College had one hanging on his wall.
It was a ring with a diameter of 1-1,5 m and between 5-10 cm wide.
It had a storage capacity of breathtaking 5 megabytes
Vintage, is a term that almost is too new :lol:

Haven't refined yet any platter, some YT vids did show there might be some platinum but very small amounts, on the other hand I found there should be some cobalt which is quite expensive comparing to other metals, not just aluminium as you read on most places. Perhaps piling up and properly separating the metals might deem worthy I'm quite curious about the cobalt content.

Edit: had no idea about that jimdoc, they are raising somewhere as well even tho i'm really sketchy about batteries since I don't know where to start with them.

There is probably more cobalt in lithium batteries.