# Hard Drive Discs with Platinum



## Fever (Apr 6, 2007)

All,

It is well known that modern hard drive discs contain a thin alloy of Platinum. As scrappers, many of us have lots of these discs in our "collections"

I'm told it is quite easy to retrieve this Platinum by gently bending the discs to fracture this surface layer, then use HCL to digest the base metals underneath, allowing the Platinum alloy to flake off for collection. You can then further refine the Platinum from the alloy.

My questions is: With these discs being rather readily available as scrap, and with the price of Platinum quite substantial these days, why isn't this more of a priority to most PC scrappers? I know the amount of Pt is minimal, but for such an easy recovery process such as this, I would think everyone would be jumping on this bigtime. Am I missing something about the process that I haven't mentioned above? Is there a trick to this process, or is it as simple as it looks? 

I have viewed the information from the post further down, but I don't see any major stumbling blocks in the process. Maybe it is just that easy? I would probably refrain from taking the Platinum to the crucible, as I don't have that level of ability yet, but I would like to collect the purified metal after acid refinement for future processing.

Thanks in advance for any info or progress regarding this process.....

Fever


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## Noxx (Apr 6, 2007)

The thing is, there isn't much Pt in the disks. Not even 30 cents. But yes, It's a good idea to keep them.


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## lazersteve (Apr 6, 2007)

Hey guys,

I'll be posting a video today (in about an hour) showing how to disassemble the drives. It includes the preparations for the acid bath.

I just finished filming and will post after editing.

Steve


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## lazersteve (Apr 10, 2007)

Here's some more information on Pt in hard drive platters. 

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

http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/news.20010518_whitepaper.html

http://news.com.com/A+divide+over+the+future+of+hard+drives/2100-1008_3-6108687.html

Steve


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## Fever (Apr 10, 2007)

Great info Steve!

Wow, I can't even imagine having a hard drive with "Terabit" capacity! Soon, everyone will have entire libraries downloaded on their machines. Cool stuff.... and the switching to Iron-Platinum grains fom Cobalt-Platinum grains. I wonder how this may change the chemistries we use to recover the Pt?

Fever


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