# Harddrives - what can be harvested - and what it contains ?



## carasoph

Hiya all,

As my first post here, after reading mostly ANYTHING around here, I must say that I have a very good idea of what and where thing are going/doing....
and I must take my hat down to all of you here....
If I only knew of this community 2 months ago, I wouldn't have thrown away those 500+ computers I had in my brother's garage....  

BUT... I must say that I'm still confused!
I recently got a bunch of 150+ Hard drives (free) and I want to know if they are worth the trouble of tearing them apart, and if they are, what exactly should I take out of them ???

I have done that barbaric, though - VERY clean, action on 1 of them just to see what is in it, and here is what I have found:

2 Somewhat magnetic Gold colored main discs.
1 VERY shiny silver colored engine complex
4 VERY strong magnets at the base of the needle
1 WORTHLESS writing needle (except for the $0.02 copper worth at its base)

My questions are:
1. is there any value to those parts?
2. What would I expect to get from what parts ?


Thanks...

Caramon Majer


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## lazersteve

Welcome to the forum Carasoph,

The platters (silver discs) are where the Platinum is in hard drives.

The casing is typically aluminum or magnesium (rarely).

The head armature is aluminum with a small amount of copper. 

The screws are usually iron or steel alloys. 

The platter spacers are aluminum alloys.

The spindle motor has an aluminum housing with copper stator wrapped on an insulated iron core.

The circuit board is loaded with tidbits of monolitihic capacitors which typically contain nickel, tin, palladium, and sometimes even silver, gold, or platinum. The circuit board headers are of course gold plated over copper or brass.

The magnets are usually nickel plated neodymium types and sometimes samarium-cobalt . Other types of magnets may also be used.

If you haven't checked out my website http://www.goldrecovery.us , you should. I'm working on a new PGM Processing DVD which will include an entire section on processing hard disc platters.

Here's the forum 10 cent Guided Tour link :

Guided Tour

Enjoy,

Steve


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## carasoph

Steve,

That is the most detailed and concrete answer I ever got over the net on ANYTHING... :lol: 

Thank you for the details, it really helped me a lot...

Hopefully, I will not be a noob for long... :lol: 

CaraSoph


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## carasoph

Any1 knows what is the yield from those platters ?


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## Lou

Well Johnson Matthey (a major refiner themselves) says that they contain on average 35% platinum. Whether that's by mass of the whole disk, or by mass of that particular component, I do not know. I do know that my friend has several hundred of these, but I'm not keen to do anything with them unless I can find a reliable report on them.


source: http://www.platinum.matthey.com/applications/harddisk.html


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## lazersteve

Lou,

Welcome to the forum. 

Several links referring to the content of Hard Disk platters have been posted, including the one you have posted. Here's a few threads relating to platters:
Platters 1

Platters 2

Platters 3

Platters 4

These are just a few of the platter posts.

Steve


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## Lou

Thank you very much sir. I'd already started to look into some of your (and others') work, and I appreciate the links!

Personally, I would probably burn off as much as the organics as possible, and then dissolve the residues in lead, add zinc, stir, and try the Parks process. Wouldn't want to cupel. Either that or I'd dissolve all in copper, electrolyze the copper from the crude anode, and collect the sludge and do wet chem on that. 

Platinum is really inert stuff, so the residues from burned hard drives should be a mixed bag of lesser metal oxides, with the platinum metal being unoxidized (it doesn't oxidize even when molten). This metallic ash of sorts ought to dissolve nicely with say, sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid. That would remove the base metals, and leave the platinum residue behind, which could be treated with AR, or done via gas phase haloextraction (personally, I think a viable option for catalytic converters...)


Regards,
Lou


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## Platdigger

Lou, welcome to the forum. 
Can not seem to send you a PM......


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## goldsilverpro

The Parkes process has always seemed quite dangerous to me. First off, there would be molten lead, which always sends off fumes. Then, the Parkes way to remove the zinc from the PM is to evaporate it off.

There was an old gov BOM report that used aluminum instead of zinc. I've always found that separating Al from PM is difficult though. 

Electrolytic copper is theoretical but impractical, unless you use a membrane. With only a few ppm of impurities, the copper deposit at the cathode would soon be so fluffy and non-adherent that it would be impossible to work with.

In any of these processes, I feel that you should first consider the negatives.

That's a pretty good idea on the catalytic converters, Lou. Using chlorine gas is dangerous but could be easily made safe. Cl2 would probably get the Rh, also. Wouldn't the PGM end up in a liquid form? May have rinsing issues, especially with hydrocarbons present. The alumina may be quite absorbent, also. May be able to put catalyst in boiling water to rinse or, maybe, use ultrasonic rinsing. Cats could make a fortune for somebody that could come up with a process that is fast, efficient, cheap, simple, and safe. Interesting idea.


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## aflacglobal

Lou, welcome to the forum. Now i got another brain to pick. :wink: 
Chris, lou, or anyone. Why is the RH so darn hard to break down. I mean what is it that won't let it dissolve in the acid. I guess what i am try to say is the problem with electron acceptance, rejection, or something totally different? Is their something needed or missing ?

:?:


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## goldsilverpro

Hey, Ralph.

The Rh thing has mainly to do with strong bonding, I would guess. 

To dissolve any metal, you need two things: an oxidizer and something for it to combine with. Rh will combine with many things to form compounds: sulfates, chlorides, and phosphates, etc., all in various oxidation states. Therefore, the oxidizer is possibly the problem. Nothing common is strong enough to oxidize the Rh and, therefore, it won't dissolve. 

Probably, though, the lattice bonding in the solid Rh is too strong to be overcome by common acid(s). The only formulas that even barely touch the Rh involve concentrated sulfuric acid, which is the strongest common acid. Also, conc. H2SO4 is a powerful oxidizing agent.

Could be both of the above. Maybe, they're both the same phenomenon.


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## Lou

Thank you very much all. The forum is actually acting pretty buggy, it doesn't forward me to my posts after I post them, it says ''debug error encountered'' or something of the like. I am not surprised that I can't get any PMs (damn!). Edit: I can Private Messages.

Ok, with respect to the Parks process. I've done it before on a small scale and I can say temperature control is important, less temperature equals less oxidation (which means better absorption of metal values), and more importantly, less metal vapor pressure for both the Pb and the Zn. I did not distill off the zinc because it would be a pain in the butt to do, instead, I dissolved in HCl which worked a treat!

Second, in defense of copper, which also I have done. It is only really good with low concentration materials that have a lot of burnables. I used a pure piece of copper sheet as the cathode, and my anode was about 97% copper. I forget the exact molar composition of the bath, but it was your basic copper (II) sulfate and sulfuric acid, but to ensure that I got a clean plating (not the fluffy stuff you had), I cleaned the copper cathode with concentrated HCl, then fine sand paper, that helps a good deposition. The biggest secret to getting a shiny copper deposit (and not fouling up your precious metal mud concentrate) is to add a few tablespoons of thiourea--you will get a very nice shiny copper plate, not the dull stuff that's easily scraped off. This adheres. 

On to the catalytics...I have actually done some small (as in 1 honeycomb) tests with this gas phase transport and it works well, very well, and is very clean. The downsides are that you have to use a gaseous halogen, high temperature, and for this you need expensive materials, like quartz, SS 316, or monel. I am doing active research in this area, and will be glad to let out some details, but for now, I kind of want to keep it proprietary like. My method is different than the autoclave+H2SO4+NH4Cl method from the South Dakota School of Mines Patent, and it affords an almost quantitative yield based on what I've seen so far. 


On the topic of rhodium, that's really something you usually don't see outside of a very specialized industry, I've probably seen and been able to buy more rhodium in the past few months (several ounces of the metal) than ever before in my life. It's expensive but it's easy enough to refine. 

Hot aqua regia does attack rhodium, and so does concentrated, 18M sulfuric at a very high temperature (literally high enough to make the H2SO4 start to decompose into SO3, which is very very nasty) with the formation of a brown solution. Iridium is much harder to deal with than rhodium, which for me has been just as bad as platinum for dissolving big pieces (though powdered Pt goes faster). I have a picture of me dissolving some rhodium sponge that a friend sent me (to confirm if it was Rh) using the sulfuric. It was a qualitative test, as I didn't feel the need to fire up the AA to do it, but rhodium won't dissolve in nitric like palladium, or in HCl, but it will dissolve in sulfuric acid, something which its PGM sisters will not do sans palladium (which is ruled out by the nitric test).

What determines the corrosion resistance of a particular metal depends on a variety of factors, and the chemical reasons behind it are very complex. Some of it does have to do with how easily its valence electrons can be lost or added to, but there are also nuclear effects at work as well. Transition metal chemistry can be very complex (pun intended hahah  )


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## Harold_V

goldsilverpro said:


> Electrolytic copper is theoretical but impractical, unless you use a membrane. With only a few ppm of impurities, the copper deposit at the cathode would soon be so fluffy and non-adherent that it would be impossible to work with.



Indeed!

I could write a book on that one! 

I tried that process, when I first started refining, in hopes of avoiding the inquartation process. 

Please-------don't get me started! :wink: 

Harold


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## Lou

Really? Is it that problematic for you? What current densities, what electrolyte(s) and concentration, how much agitation, what temperature, and how pure was your anode?


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## Harold_V

Chuckle!

My negative experience goes back to the early 70's. At this point I have no recollection of any of the details, but I would have been working with little in the way of equipment at that time. I was still in the very early phase of learning to refine, and was hoping to circumvent what looked like a difficult process, inquartation. 

I got off on the wrong foot when I made my vat from stoneware, which promptly broke while in operation. Couple gallons of copper sulfate and sulfuric acid spilled on the floor in the garage. 

I have no doubt that the system works, it's just that I am not a chemist, and have a limited bag of tricks. I got exactly what GSP described-----a fluffy deposition, which readily contaminated the sludge. 

There isn't a doubt in my mind, one of my problems was the fact that I had low grade copper, contaminated with far too many elements in higher than acceptable proportions. Sort of brings to mind a gold or silver cell. A waste of time unless the feed is already of high quality. 

Harold


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## Lou

I see. You know what they say, garbage in, garbage out.

Electrolysis can be useful, but it does need a certain degree of babying. If the nitric acid is cheap, then I'd just say to add as much pins and circuit boards to a big crucible of copper, and saturate it with gold, silver, platinum, and all the rest and burn away all the plastic and gangue. Then just dissolve as much away in nitric, drop out the silver with chloride, spot test for Pd.

Then some cold AR on the gold and Pt powder should separate them nicely.


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## Harold_V

I'd have to agree, assuming nitric is readily available. 

I was fortunate. While I played around a little with electronic scrap early on, it wasn't long until my hobby was inundated with high grade wastes from the jeweler's bench. While I was very capable of running the low grade stuff, and did it pretty much as described, I moved away from it and never really looked back. I was too busy refining better materials and didn't have the time to waste. In a sense, my success played a big role in my limited knowledge. I got very good at doing certain things, but didn't experiment as much as I might have liked. Stripping with a sulfuric cell, for example, never got past the building the cell, which was never put in operation. Same goes for a gold parting cell. It was completed, and anodes even cast, but by then I was so well entrenched in my customary procedures, all of which yielded excellent quality products, that I simply never looked back. 

To be honest, when it went from hobby to a living, a lot of the fun went with it. 

No regrets, but it's nice if you can keep your hobby just that-----a hobby. 

I am slowly returning to machining as my hobby. It's taken years to get past the burnout I experienced, which may explain my eagerness to turn refining into a livelihood, even when it was never intended to be one.

I envy you your chemical education. While I got very good at refining, I was (and am still) often at a loss to explain why things work as they do. I am not educated beyond high school. I was very good at following the recipe, however, so coupled with good guidance from books, I managed to conquer the challenges to my satisfaction. 

Harold


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## goldsilverpro

Lou,

Your experiments with electrolytic copper must have been brief. Unless zero base metals were being added to the copper, the deposit would, over time, become unmanageable. Since it would be foolish to do this on a one-shot basis, you would need a system that could be used over and over 

Let's say your bars are 98% copper/2% base metals. At first, the Cu in solution is much higher than the base metals (BM) and the cathode deposit will be smooth and adherent. The rate at which the various metals deposit is mainly dependent on their concentration and their individual electrical characteristics. Therefore, at first, there is very little deposition of the base metals. They build up and their deposition rate increases. At some point, the deposit turns to crap, no matter how much grain refiner (thiourea; iron-free molasses, etc.) is used. For a 30% base metal, copper alloy, the deposit may turn to crap in only 5 minutes. The number one problem in electrolytic refining systems is to maintain a sound, manageable, cathode deposit. You can't do that when base metals reach a certain level in the solution. You can only delay it, briefly, through the use of additives.

I see no gain though the melting of PM scrap into copper. At best, you would convert solids to a powder, for easier dissolving.



> Electrolysis can be useful, but it does need a certain degree of babying. If the nitric acid is cheap, then I'd just say to add as much pins and circuit boards to a big crucible of copper, and saturate it with gold, silver, platinum, and all the rest and burn away all the plastic and gangue. Then just dissolve as much away in nitric, drop out the silver with chloride, spot test for Pd.


This doesn't make any sense to me, at all. It takes 1/2 gallon of nitric to dissolve a pound of copper. There is already plenty of copper in the items mentioned to be able to use nitric. Why waste extra copper and nitric and produce unneeded waste? Also, with the method you suggest, you would have lots of un-oxidized, PM containing, carbon floating on top.


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## Lou

Yes, fouling of the electrolyte is a problem and as you alluded to, it's an equilibrium problem, as more copper is removed from the system, the amount of impurities in the anode rises and they start to dissolve as well. The problems begin when the amount of copper reducing is more than the amount being oxidized into solution to replenish that which is deposited. I will grant you that I've only done the method on the small scale (i.e. <kilogram range) and it worked reasonably well, how it goes with larger runs, I cannot say. I will also admit that I did not run it to until the anode was gone (I'd have to look in my notes for the actual weight).

It seems you have experience with doing it industrially. I would be glad to hear about it.



"This doesn't make any sense to me, at all. It takes 1/2 gallon of nitric to dissolve a pound of copper. There is already plenty of copper in the items mentioned to be able to use nitric. Why waste extra copper and nitric and produce unneeded waste? Also, with the method you suggest, you would have lots of un-oxidized, PM containing, carbon floating on top."

You're right if that is how you understood me. When I say burn it all and let it dissolve in copper, I mean burn off all of the plastics. It's been my experience with nitric acid and various plastics that it can makes these plastics very gummy and encapsulate your metal values. I don't like to dissolve metal off of any polymer save fluorinated ones if I can at all help it. Also, I don't understand what you mean by ''carbon floating on top''. If it is incinerated properly with excess oxygen, there will be no carbon. There will be metal oxides, but no carbon.

I say to dissolve it in copper because the resultant alloy is much easier to deal with, and I suppose it can be likened to inquartation. As I recall, many electrical solders have tin mixed in, and tin is bothersome to deal with when doing a straight nitric acid digestion. That is my rationale for me saying that. Aside from that, I do agree, just burn it all to oxides, let the silver, lead, and copper oxidize then part the unoxidized gold and any platinum from the rest with nitric. However, you say that there is already sufficient copper in there that it is alloyed down and can be dissolved with nitric as is. If that's so, then I owe you a big favor as this might save mea lot of time if I were to refine computer parts in mass. I never said I've done this with CPU material, just what I'd do if I had a bunch to handle. I've done it with other things, but never computer parts. I tend to stay away from them because I dislike the plastic components.

Thanks for your replies.


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## goldsilverpro

I surely misunderstood. It sounded like you were burning the boards in molten copper in a crucible. In which case, I can easily visualize unoxidized black carbon floating on top

About the only modern plastic I've found on boards that won't stand up to hot strong nitric is nylon. It gets sticky and expands. Some of the older plastics tended to form a hard powdery skin of the surface in the presence of strong hot oxidizing acids.

The point is that, due to the inherent problems of electrolytic copper, I chose to not do it industrially, except when using a membrane to prevent any deposition. I did happen to be a plating engineer, for about 10 years, and I owned two plating shops in L.A. 

You mentioned earlier that you formulated plating solutions. May I ask what gold compound you're using for the gold solution? Is the solution alkaline or acidic?


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## Lou

Of course you can ask. If in acidic conditions, HAuCl4, potassium chloride, and HCl, not very good cosmetic deposition on Ti, to get that the deposit must be heated.
Platinum deposits clean with various salts, K2PtCl6 in HCl works on Ti. It also works with perchloric acid for other Pt salts. You can add a little lead (II) acetate to help speed it up in dilute solutions.

Otherwise, a cyanide based system, of which you should be most familiar if you've owned plating shops. Gold potassium cyanide, free cyanide, a suitable buffer, and the salt of a weak acid (i.e. ascorbate salt) with electricity, although there are other aqueous nonelectric reduction methods. 

I do this for making electrodes for electrochem, mainly platinized Ti and sometimes on Ni, not for jewelry.

Now if I may ask, what did you plate, and what types of solutions did you use? I may be asking for recipes if it's not proprietary.

Regards,
Lou


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## goldsilverpro

Lou,

A long, long time ago, I was a senior chemist for Sel-Rex, which was, at that time, the world's largest provider of precious metals plating solutions. Among other things, I was in charge of the manufacturing of these solutions. The formulations today are essentially the same as they were back then. We sold about 200 different types of gold solutions and about 95% of these were made up with potassium gold cyanide (PGC). The rest were made from sodium gold sulfite. Platinized titanium or tantalum was used as anodes.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact formulas, as I haven't used them in 30 years. The most popular system we sold was a hard, bright gold that was used on such things as PCB fingers. It contained 1 tr.oz. of gold per gallon, as PGC. A small amount of nickel sulfate or cobalt sulfate was used as a hardener. The electrolyte was large amounts of potassium citrate and citric acid. I'm thinking the pH was around 4 or 5. It's been too long. The gold deposit purity ran from 99% to 99.9%, depending on how much Co or Ni was used.


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## Lou

Wow, it is a pleasure to talk to someone so knowledgeable and has much real world experience. You're definitely a resource. The stuff I do is very much on the small scale and most of it is for the little electrochem work I do in the laboratory.


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## Gotrek

I know this is an old post and sorry for bumping it. But there is also gold on the head contacts of the writing arms. Although very small it can be seen with the naked eye. Look at the head of the writing arm (the little black squares on the arm, the Copper wire is soldered to them. They are cold. I tried to break on open to see how deep the contacts are. Seems to be surface only.


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## synthetiklone

Hello everyone,

I must also say thank-you to the tutors and mentors starting and contributing to this forum. I too have wasted a fair amount of cpu's (gold/etc) experimenting in the past. (heh - including blowing a decent pile of gold dust clear off the fire brick because the flame was too strong!).

I was reading in this thread about disc platters and thought I might share some info on my experiments. I delved into aluminium anodising a while back, and I used sodium hydroxide (caustic soda - an alkali) to flash clean the aluminium. It is cheap here, and available as a drain cleaner.

Anyway..

I cut up all the most silver looking platters into 10mm strips using big tin snips (yes, a few blisters!) to expose the aluminium base material on the edges for easier/quicker dissolving. All was placed in a solution of sodium hydroxide in a plastic heat proof container, and it fizzes away (and initially gets quite hot) for days at room temp. A little agitation each day to keep things moving along. After a week you are left with a milky powdery goop with the thin platter plating floating around. Once filtered and cleaned, I tried to melt the foil with propane torch, with no effect, simply gets very hot, and crumbles into smaller pieces. It is quite sharp & unpliable (nickel?)

UPDATE: I left some in room temp nitric for a day & I now have very thin shiny (pliable) foil bits floating about. The next test will be heating the nitric. And after that (or maybe before!) I will be watching lasersteves (?) video/info for more advice I guess! 

I have been collecting ceramic honeycomb from cats and oxy sensors, and CPU's, but where I live, the local recycler has a 99.9% monopoly on buying EVERYTHING available from all the collection depots around town.

Thanks for your time, and hope I am not going down the wrong track with using alkali to dissolve the aluminium, and if not, I hope it helps others.
I am looking forward to the "anxious newbie" part of watching the gold dissapear into AR, once I am confident enough with (not stuffing up) the process!

Will be sharing anything new (maybe re-invented?) that I discover in the future here, but you guys/gals are currently way ahead, and more confident than I currently am.


Cheers

SK


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## aflacglobal

Welcome to the forum synthetiklone. Glad to have you. :wink:


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## starzfan0211

As LazerSteve pointed out, there are lots of stuff to get. But don't miss anything. As we have been dis-assembling hard drives (most of them older) we have been throwing all the cast aluminum in one box and the other aluminum in another. Cast Aluminum is going for .65-.70 per lb here right now. We are really trying not to waste anything. And we are also gathering any brass we may find, which is a little.


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## synthetiklone

I have written elsewhere about an update placing dissolved platter material in aqua regia, and heating mildly to start a half hour chain reaction. Thus dissolving platter material into a fine shiny dust substance. Well here is a continuation of this experiment..

While I was working with a powerful neodymium magnet (30x30x10mm) with the ferric chloride and the CPU pins being magnetic, I found that with the platter solution nearby, it would sparkle and shine. Initially, I thought it was a reflection from the chrome coated magnet, as it was like a wave of light passing through the liquid.. but...... 

The very fine metallic dust from the platters is strongly affected by magnetism. The particles i have left in the lime-green aqua-regia are polarity sensitive, meaning with a powerful magnet, I am able to change the N-S direction the particles sit - in solution. And this works from about 700-800mm away from the solution!

With most particles (after a stir) sitting almost suspended, when I rotate the magnet N to S, a wave of bright light is reflected from the particles whos orientation along the magnetic flux plane is shifting. It is quite a display, and in all my long years of "pottering" about with chem & tech, I've never seen anything as intriguing. It's almost as cool as "ferro fluid".

So, there you go, whatever the hard drive platter material left unable to dissolve any further in the aqua-regia is magnetically polarity sensitive.
I will be placing some of this dust under 300x microscope to inspect its shape soon and report back if there is any interest.

Is platinum this way magnetic? or maybe, whatever it is, is bound up in the platinum? or maybe theres no platinum at all, and it is something else huh. I'll have to re-read up on the manufacture of the platters again, maybe there is mention there of composition.

Anyway, what an interesting fascinating subject, it's like "low-tech chemical reverse engineering".

Hey, BTW, is anyone reading my rambling experiments? or is all my writings already known, and I make unecessary repeats clogging/cluttering, and generally boring peoples of the forum? 


Regards

SK


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## Platdigger

Cobalt is magnetic.

Platinum is....what's the word?.....paramagnetic?

Randy


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## Chuck_Revised

Yes, we're reading your texts. It's very interesting. Welcome to the forum and please continue your contributions.


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## calgoldrecyclers

i was reading on a computer website yesterday, that the newer platters are made of a composite glass, with a micron thick layer of ruthenmium(a pt mineral) but does not contain paltinum or any other pm. the most you could get out of a dead drive is the aluminum. it is just not proffitable to go after recycling drives.


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## jimdoc

Ruthenium is a precious metal worth about $420 t/oz.
It has been close to $1000 recently.
I don't know if recovering it would be worth it.


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## Anonymous

If the platter is aluminum, it should be possible to justify the cost of recovering any platinum group metals or anything else by converting the aluminum to high grade powder which retails for anywhere from $20 a pound to $6 a gram depending upon grade. The Pt group metals should just be gravy. Maybe? Possibly?

Nope, answered my own question. Too hard to refine into it's pure form. Forgive my ignorance, I am definitely a newb. Maybe there is some other aluminum based compound that's easily marketed?


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## jamthe3

how do you convert Al to high grade powder?


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## Anonymous

Usually they produce aluminum powder by crushing in a ball mill with stearin. If one melted the platters and the "skins" could be separated in some simple fashion the cooled metal could be pounded to dust. Hopefully, it wouldn't require refining aluminum which is a really nasty process done with molten salt.


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## ddrew

Protocorm said:


> Usually they produce aluminum powder by crushing in a ball mill with stearin. If one melted the platters and the "skins" could be separated in some simple fashion the cooled metal could be pounded to dust. Hopefully, it wouldn't require refining aluminum which is a really nasty process done with molten salt.



I see there a market for this 'High Grade Powder' Aluminum, but I would think the alloy of the source materials would matter, but I'm not sure? Can you take scrap aluminum (hard drive cases, platters, scrap sheet aluminum, et al) and run it through a Ball Mill and make High Grade Powder? 

Thanks in advance for your help.


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## Anonymous

This will take a bit more research. It may require heat stressing to make the aluminum friable and though the alloy does have useful properties it probably wouldn't be useful for most metallurgical processes. It would likely be fine for aluminized coatings and roofing products. One other possibility I've seen is reagent grade aluminum oxide. The technology can be learned, marketing is going to be the killer.


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## Anonymous

Found something on fluxing aluminum with a mixture of sodium chloride and potassium chloride. Given the similarities to demagging of aluminum it might actually produce a fairly pure metal. If anyone else knows something about this the info would be greatly appreciated.
If a pure metal could be produced it would be a matter of crushing and sorting according to particle size.


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## synthetiklone

Small update with unknown results

I boiled my silvery powder material from the platters. in contaminated nitric, so dont know if anything really happened in there.
So I made up some AR, and left for some days in this acid mix.
Nothing happened, so..
Boiled AR mixture for quite some time (15 minutes), outside, as brown fumes were being created. After 15 minutes, I still have my silvery powder. It did not dissolve into boiling AR solution!
I tested the solution when cool, with stannous, and only a slight brown yellowy stain visable. Hmmm..!?!

I've since rinsed clean and placed this, still magnetically sensitive silvery powder in water into a sealed test tube, and placed it away in the "round-to-it" department.

SK


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## patnor1011

hi to all... as far as i know that silver platres from hd contains some pd, pa but it is not worth of processing... these discs are made from nickel which is way more worth than any pa or pd on them. we recently xray few of them and thats how i know...


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## Rag and Bone

Protactinium (Pa)
"Due to its scarcity, high radioactivity, and toxicity, there are currently no uses for protactinium outside of basic scientific research."

Do you mean platinum? (Pt)


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## patnor1011

Rag and Bone said:


> Protactinium (Pa)
> "Due to its scarcity, high radioactivity, and toxicity, there are currently no uses for protactinium outside of basic scientific research."
> 
> Do you mean platinum? (Pt)



sorry my mistake... of course Pt.... my friend who run electronic recycling company used to give all hdd to man who paid him price for alluminium for them. when I have told him about disks inside that they may contain some valuable coating he opened few and xray them... he found out that they are made from nickel which is 4-5 times more valuable than alluminium and said that not a single one will go out :wink:


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## Platdigger

Are you sure about this? They are all made of nickel?

Sure it is not just nickel in the coating layer?

Along with cobalt and others.
Randy


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## Platdigger

Or, could it be that they are a nickel, aluminum alloy........

this could be interesting.
Randy


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## patnor1011

well we xray one and he said that disk is made from /dont remember exactly but will ring and ask about/ 95% of nickel. not alluminium... since that he said that he is opening them and taking discs off so i presume that they are from nickel mostly otherwise he will not be doing that... and ah since that time he likes me more... i dont blame him he is dealing with about 500-600 computers monthly...
thats why I am collecting them and hope that this year Ill have my xray to check them but if not i am going to his factory in summer for couple of days to get some more info... he quite likes me so he said to come for few days and he will show me everything... last time I saw there about 50kg of goldplated connectors, pins etc etc... I am trying to set up something simmillar in ireland but equipment is costly... f.e. that portable xray cost about 40k usd... other machinery like crushers, granulators too... god help me must choose some good numbers on tonights euromillions


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## Gotrek

Nickel wouldn't make sense it's magnetic. It would not work for data storage. It would defeat the purpose. You can't align magnetic particles on a surface if the surface is also magnetic.

It would have to be a non magnetic base with a dusting of magnetic particles. It may be aluminum platter with a nickel dusting.


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## Scott2357

There is some nickel in most late model drives but it's not in the platters.


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## Gotrek

Yes I was speaking for the platters themselves.

And I could be totally wrong. This is just reasoning from my head not actual documented facts.


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## synthetiklone

This I hope is the link to the analysis msg I posted for the mu metal magnetic plate shield holder.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=22950#22950

Also, the fine shiny metallic magnetically sensitive polarity-wise dust stuff that didnt dissolve in AR, was placed in a cupel, and heated to oxy acetelyne temp from under the crucible, it promptly evaporated, not melting together at all.
Some left in the test tube was accidentally on purpose rubbed across my finger, and by which it created a bright silvery coating, similar to paint, but thin. After promptly washing this out of my finger print due to worry over contamination of thyself with absolutely mysterious unknown and maybe toxic refined silvery strange substance, I am left pretty much in the dark.

Hmm.. cheers

SK


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## GeeDub

Scott2357 said:


> There is some nickel in most late model drives but it's not in the platters.


OK, let's try to clear up exactly what is in hard drive platters. Too much of this thread is devoted to "I think it's this" and "I guess It's that"

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/storage/im/index.html
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/performance_media_tp577.pdf


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## lazersteve

G,

I have a document by Fujitsu on my website that reflects the same data as the Hitachi site.


Here's the link:

Fujitsu HDD Data

Steve


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## GeeDub

lazersteve said:


> I have a document by Fujitsu



Hi Steve, 
Unfortunately i can never get to your website. I get an endless loop. I click "I agree", get to "enter site", and end up back at "I agree".

BTW the link you just posted is invalid. recovery is spelled wrong
-G


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## lazersteve

G,

I corrected the link.

I also tested my site and the log in worked fine the first time through at 11:00 PM CST . I clicked I agree and then the site page came up.

Check to make sure you are accepting cookies, allowing Active X scripting, and if using Firefox your have installed and configured my site with the IE Tab plug in.

Steve


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## king_joolian

These are the conclusions I have reached regarding hard drives. If anyone has actually purified anything of note from hard drives, feel free to post some disproving pictures.

Cobalt-Platinum-Chromium-Boron doesnt sound like platinum is close to being the main ingredient in the coating of the platters. 
Isnt platinum non magnetic ... thus in the coating for an adhesion/durability reason, ie 1% of the coating? 

Hitachi's documentation says they use a chromium layer with other layers ontop of that.
Could the shiny appearance of the platters come from this chromium layer and the others are so thin they are transparent, only tinting the colour darker?
Isnt platinum white-silver rather than dark-silver, making it extremely unlikely to be present in much of a quantity on the dark-silver platters?
The platters feel heavier than aluminimum though, maybe its alumaximum? 

Anyone have access to a machine for making soft drink cans? $0.10 refund each around here, 1 hard drive could make 100 of them at least. $10 a drive! Now thats how you recycle, convert it into something government subsidised. Please note, this is probably illegal, or would be within a week.

I have to say that Hitachi wiped the floor with seagate in the actual information department.
Seagate was essentially marketing rubbish, hyping up their 'unique patented processes'... it was so irritating that Im never buying one of their drives again. 
Now thats how you sell products!


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