# Question about gold and silver in hard drive head



## Anonymous (Aug 16, 2008)

Can you please help me if there is gold and silver in the hard drive heads or any part of the hard drive ? Please see photo attachment.


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## EDI Refining (Aug 26, 2008)

Morning,

In your pictures, it looks like Au (gold) but in the several HD I have, they are all actually just Cu (copper) not gold. One thing I have yet to complete an assay on, is the very tip, this may have some Pt plating


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## butcher (Aug 31, 2008)

I disolved those wire's on the coil with my gold, they took a little longer to disolve than the other gold, they are not base metal, they are some type of plastic like string plated with gold, probably a base metal to plate to, maybe nickle, (as electricity travels on surface of wire), my guess why no center core conductor, coils worth breaking off and throwing in the pot, most hard drive coils are copper those gold colered ones are platted AU. 

p.s. hope I have improved my typing Harold, How Are Buddy?


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## Harold_V (Aug 31, 2008)

Hey, much improved, butcher! I'm damned proud of you! :wink: 

Doing pretty well for an old guy-----still plugging away at the house I've been building for what seems my entire life-time. Getting close, though!

Thanks for thinking of me. 

Harold


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## GoldmanM (Jan 24, 2012)

Hi, 

Some gold have in heads and wires, also in printed board ( i don't know name on it ) which hold chip .

Sorry for my bad english.


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## butcher (Mar 24, 2012)

GoldmanM,
welcome to the forum, your english will improve, mine has, just do the best you can with it.


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## MMFJ (Mar 31, 2012)

Some of these heads DO have a nice amount of gold on them....




I just recently dismantalled about 100 hard drives (some really 'big' ones - 384 Mbytes!) - all from a hoard where we pulled dozens of ceramic processors and a few P-Pros. Found several with gold as pictured.

The one in the center was the 'crem-d-la-crem' - toughest to open, had all platters attached together (put that one on my shelf) and looks like it might make a good pasta cutter or something.... 

Pulled out 11 pounds of magnets and 8.7 lbs of heads and platters (some really 'brown' looking from the oldest drives - I still need to look on the forum for data about those).





But, this thread is about the head...

I thought I would put this lot on feebay but after reading this post, maybe I should keep them around?


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## goldenchips (Aug 7, 2012)

i have lots of head in harddrive seperated from the aluminum arm. gold and silver plated i think. 5 kilograms


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