Hard drive platters

[rasanders22]

That works out to about .0006 dollars per platter according to my math. If anyone wants to see my math just ask.

yeah, that makes sense.

I've been taking apart a bunch of them by hand (it's a bitch at first)
i buy them for about a dollar a piece
i was doing this because i liked the magnets.
(and it's kind of cathartic to do something with my hands instead of play video games)

Does anyone know how new they need to be or from what company?
I looked around tentatively for patents and found one that said each side of a disk had about 20nm of platinum on them.
but i have no idea what company or make and model these would be from.

any ideas?

I was thinking that maybe a quick dip in acid would take off this layer or something.
or maybe an electrolytical cell could de-plate them...?

 

[goldsilverpro]

If my math is right, 20nm = .8 millionths of an inch of platinum. That figures out to about 2 cents worth of platinum per square inch of surface area. Now, all you have to do is get it.

 

[rasanders22]

Ok I used the wrong density for my calculation.
Here is my math.
a 3 1/2 inch HD has platters that are 3.74 inches in diameter. (3.5 inch was the size ofd the floppy, not the drive)
1 inch equals .0254 meters.
3.74*.0254*.5=.0474 meters radius.
Volume of a cylinder is pi*r^2*h
.0474^2*3.14*.000000020=.00000000014m^3 or .14*10^-9m^3
using this link http://www.allmeasures.com/Formulae/static/formulae/density/26.htm
I obtained a weight of .000003kg
Now using this converter http://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/kilograms-to-troy-ounces.htm which does Kg to troy ounces, I get .0000965 troy ounces. Platnum is ~1750 a troy ounce so 1750$*.0000965=~.17$ per side. Since there is 2 sides per platter that is 34 cents per platter.

That works out to about .0006 dollars per platter according to my math. If anyone wants to see my math just ask.

yeah, that makes sense.

I've been taking apart a bunch of them by hand (it's a bitch at first)
i buy them for about a dollar a piece
i was doing this because i liked the magnets.
(and it's kind of cathartic to do something with my hands instead of play video games)

Does anyone know how new they need to be or from what company?
I looked around tentatively for patents and found one that said each side of a disk had about 20nm of platinum on them.
but i have no idea what company or make and model these would be from.

any ideas?

I was thinking that maybe a quick dip in acid would take off this layer or something.
or maybe an electrolytical cell could de-plate them...?

 

[LaneLander]

yeah, that makes sense.

(and it's kind of cathartic to do something with my hands instead of play video games)

Love that

Does anyone know how new they need to be or from what company?

All

any ideas?

I was thinking that maybe a quick dip in acid would take off this layer or something.
or maybe an electrolytical cell could de-plate them...?

Not sure but you may have to change your math to account for the percentage in quality over time.

(quoted from an external source) Information storage requirements continue to expand at rapid rates, fuelled by the growing use of computers for video and audio applications. Today, all hard disks contain platinum in their magnetic layers, compared with around 50 per cent in 1997. The proportion of platinum in the magnetic alloy has been increasing steadily over time, from less than 10 per cent five years ago to over 35 per cent, on average, today.

The company I work for hired me to start a zero landfill policy and to assist in refining/re-marketing efforts. We are looking to generate on average about 2000lbs of greenboard for refining and 100lbs of gold fingers per month. Hard drives are a subset of our business and are anticipating processing 100 - 500 drives per month. This is good information but in the end I do not thing that 34 cents per platter will make be separate them for processing at this time. Unless someone can provide me with a better plan.

Regards
Lane

 

[jaythenutz]

Heat them to 900C and sell off as aluminum. They are higher grade than the casing which i believe are made of cast aluminum. So you should get almost double the price for them. Or while molten slowly poor into a 55 gal drum of chilled water and make X-mas tinsel. Exorcising full safety of course.

 

[jimdoc]

The 10-35% figure is for a very thin layer, so it is a waste of time and chemicals or fuel to do anything other than throwing them in with your scrap aluminum. If you have the space to keep stockpiling them hoping for much higher platinum prices, or a better recovery method, then go for that. Mine all get thrown in with the aluminum.

Jim

 

[lmschers]

yeah, i did the math for hard drive platters somewhere in another thread.
i came up with an estimate of .7g of platinum for 1000 disks... maybe 10 cents a piece

and it sounds worthless and somebody got mad at me for suggesting that you not heed good advice and try to do it anyway....
but my reasoning is that since no one seems to be doing it, if you've got the time, why not figure out how.
some dude said he had 100 of these disks pass by him every day... that sounds like you could actually do something with them.
but it really seems like it has to be on a pretty big scale.

Thanks Lane for your info. Maybe this will become profitable for somebody.
(I still play too many video games (after work) to really finish my hobbies.
But I just got some CPU chips to work on.)

Maybe the disks just have to be incinerated... i don't know. Sounds like a bad idea.
Possibly they could be tossed into an ultrasonic bath just to clean off the thin layer of PT on the substrate.
Apparently there's chromium in them too.
I'd really like to talk to someone in the industry or see some better patents than the ones I've found though.
I just don't know exactly how they're made... and so i don't know exactly how to take them apart.