# Hard drives



## Gold Nut (Nov 28, 2008)

Hello,
Can someone tell me where the gold and platinum is in hard drives?
Gold Nut :?


----------



## butcher (Nov 28, 2008)

some have very small amount platinum on disk, silvery type.the flat cable can sometimes have a small amount of gold , have found some high grade medical one's with gold wire coils, maybe some gold in chips. also have rare earth magnet, and probably more value in aluminum, other may be able to tell you more than I about them.


----------



## Gold Nut (Dec 8, 2008)

Hey butcher,
Thanks for the info!! What can be done with the rare earth magnets? I have a big box of them (hard drives).
Gold Nut


----------



## Husker (Dec 8, 2008)

Gold Nut said:


> Hey butcher,
> Thanks for the info!! What can be done with the rare earth magnets? I have a big box of them (hard drives).
> Gold Nut



They make great blood blisters when you play with a couple of them.

Also, ppl on ebay will pay for them 

Jim.


----------



## butcher (Dec 8, 2008)

some brands of the cases are zink.


----------



## 61 silverman (Dec 30, 2008)

Do Not :: overlook the fingers that stick in-between each of the Hard Drive Discs.. Most all of them have a Very Tiny (micro) chip on the very end of each one to read the disc info.. Also look Very closely,( I USE A 10X JEWELERS LOOP ) at the wires that are soldered too this chip,, I have found some have 24kt GOLD WIRE.. Making the connection back too the processing chip,i think that is what it does.. The wire is in insulation usually with a plastic coated copper wire the two are twisted together.. Must be willing too UN-TWIST to sepperate GOLD from copper.. I added A PICTURE OF SOME OF THE WIRES WITH THE sheathing on still look closely you can see the gold. mark


----------



## patnor1011 (Dec 30, 2008)

Jaysus....
I want to cry when I recall that I have trashed about 100+ of them wires into bin....  
I need to ring my friend who is doing probably the same as me with 100+ hdd every week... Ill politely ask him to keep this wires for me... 

Update... Just spoke to him he didnt take my bite as he asked me why I want them so I have told him and he went down to factory floor to open few... But I am glad to let him know about that - he is a really nice guy and a friend. He is going to analyze few with portable XRay machine so he will let me know soon if they are really solid gold.


----------



## 61 silverman (Dec 30, 2008)

I wish I could get a hold of even 50 a week :wink: These wires are so thin that if I don't use some kind of magnification I have a very hard time seeing the wires as they sepperate and to see which way the twist is..I un twist them in my fingers,, hold one end turn the other.. Check out the little bundle of them I put together..


----------



## patnor1011 (Dec 31, 2008)

I just wandering if the same type of wires can be found in CD and DVD drives? Will go to get few as it is interesting...


----------



## Lou (Dec 31, 2008)

If it is pure gold wound with copper, why not just put them in nitric acid and give them some heat? The copper will dissolve and your gold will be left behind.


Lou


----------



## silversaddle1 (Jan 1, 2009)

Well I do have a bunch of the reader arms in a bucket, so I checked it out. Sure enough! There is gold wire in the readers. Not only that, but some of the little chips have what looks to be solid gold traces that the wires are attached to!

I need to look into this a little more!


----------



## 61 silverman (Jan 2, 2009)

I thought about that as well but it looks like the copper wires are coated with an anti-contudtive coating they do solder to different spots therefore they must be able to not contact ( bare wire's ) together... The gold wires are not coated with anything,, These sure look like Gold ,. If they are not then I appolagize for any mis-leading info.. But I think they are Gold.. When I accumalate A full Gram of them, I'll disolve w/ HCL-Cl and show the precipitate..


----------



## 61 silverman (May 19, 2009)

Hi, everyone I was going through a couple of hard drives , I came across a WESTERN DIGITAL 
Model WD200BB-75AUA1 20.0 GB Made in Malaysia
This is one of the types of Hard Drivies that do contain at least one (1) GOLD WIRE ..This certain model has only one (1) platter in-side, Manufacture Date 15 july 2001...
When I find more I will put up Model/Brand.. Maybe A list could be put together...

Mark


----------



## Art Corbit (May 28, 2009)

These little wires you are talking about are very interesting. I was thinking about an easy way to separate the copper wire from the gold wire and it is actually very simple. All you have to do is toss them in some Nitric Acid and it will dissolve the copper and leave you the pretty yellow gold. Then just pour the acid off, wash your gold and put it in your poke. And yes I have already kicked my own but for letting this one get passed me.

By the way there is a simple way to recover the Platinum from the disc in a hard drive too. A fellow on our group stumbled onto it a couple of days ago. He cut up some of the disc and put them in strong lye water for a couple of days. When he went back the lye had dissolved all the Aluminum and he just had the Platinum foil left. He filtered it off and then put the foil in some fresh Nitric. He said there was no reaction which means the lye4 water took care of all the base metal. He has already found a refinery that will take all he can get. They told him to stir the fine powder into molten lead and then they would get the Platinum out of the lead.

Nitric is all I use to recover the gold out of the electronic scrap. Just dissolve everything but the gold like Steve does with the AP. 

Art


----------



## Lou (May 28, 2009)

Art Corbit said:


> These little wires you are talking about are very interesting. I was thinking about an easy way to separate the copper wire from the gold wire and it is actually very simple. *All you have to do is toss them in some Nitric Acid and it will dissolve the copper and leave you the pretty yellow gold.* Then just pour the acid off, wash your gold and put it in your poke. And yes I have already kicked my own but for letting this one get passed me.
> 
> By the way there is a simple way to recover the Platinum from the disc in a hard drive too. A fellow on our group stumbled onto it a couple of days ago. He cut up some of the disc and put them in strong lye water for a couple of days. When he went back the lye had dissolved all the Aluminum and he just had the Platinum foil left. He filtered it off and then put the foil in some fresh Nitric. He said there was no reaction which means the lye4 water took care of all the base metal. He has already found a refinery that will take all he can get. They told him to stir the fine powder into molten lead and then they would get the Platinum out of the lead.
> 
> ...



Nice to see people actually read what I write  :


Lou said:


> If it is pure gold wound with copper, why not just put them in nitric acid and give them some heat? The copper will dissolve and your gold will be left behind.
> 
> 
> Lou






Here's my problem with the hard drives. A while back (as in a long while) Steve sent me quite a few samples that he had cut up. Of the ones I tested, none of them showed significant Pt (<20 ppm) when I x-rayed them. There might very well be platinum present, but the concentration is so minimal, it is prohibitive unless one has a lot of hard drive foils. If someone gave me several hundred pounds of hard drive foil...then I would definitely consider going after it (a la gas phase). The lack of reaction with nitric probably means it's nickel. Nickel and nitric really don't do much of anything (especially if platinum or other alloying constituents are present), but HCl attacks it much better. 

So why would a refinery want it all dissolved up into molten lead? That makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever. Please enlighten us.


----------



## Art Corbit (May 28, 2009)

From what I understand about it the refinery told him something about it was safer to ship it in the lead rather than the fine powder. Less likely to loose any of it probably. They also told him they could do an Xray type scan on the lead and tell how much Platinum was in it before they processed it. This doesn't sound exactly right to me but it may be.

The Nitric is all I use to recover this electronic scrap gold. I don't even heat it. Once the chemical reaction gets underway between the base metals and the Nitric it will get hot anyway. I make my own Nitric and try to not make it as strong as what you buy. I have plenty of time so there is no need for me to get in any hurry.

The fellow sent me a couple of pictures he took of the Platinum he recovered. It was too white and too shiny to be nickle. Nickle has a different look than Platinum. I had him put some of it in fresh Nitric and heat it and he got no reaction at all. That tells me all the base metal was gone. All he had left was a super fine dust and it must have been pretty close to pure Platinum. If it had not been he would have gotten at least a few bubbles off it when he put it in hot Nitric and he said he didn't.

Art


----------



## Oz (May 29, 2009)

We read what you say Lou, however there is often not much to add or question after your post ;-)


----------

