Hard drives. You use them, you need them, but do you know what to do with them when you are done with them? Let’s first talk about what they are and what they do for you. Hard drives store information like documents, files, pictures, and music, among many other things. When you have these items on here, sometimes you may have tax documents, business files, or whatever else, and you want to ensure they are destroyed most efficiently and securely.
Can You Recycle Your Hard Drives For Cash?
Before you sell scrap hard drives to your local yard, you may want to ask them what they do with them after they get them. Ask if there is any chance of them reselling them so they are refurbished or if they are just going to scrap them. Often, scrap yards that are only recycling hard drives will provide a certificate of destruction or COD for the drives, saying that they will only be destroyed and recycled.
Suggested Reading: What is E-Scrap & Where Can I Find It?
How To Recycle or Destroy Hard Drives
If having a piece of paper is not always what you want to do, then you may want to call a company that does shredding, hole punching, or grinding to ensure that the hard drives are entirely broken down and there are no chances that information can get out.
Often, you will have to pay for these services, but you can be assured that when you do have the hard drives destroyed, you can see them shredded or punched and know that your data is now gone forever.
How To Sell Scrap Hard Drives
Now comes the fun part: selling and cashing them in. Selling hard drives whole is the best way to get the most money for them, but depending on the situation, it may not be the best option.
Taking the hard drive board off of the drive is always going to be a good idea because it will make you the most money—as long as you have a lot of them. Hard drive boards are a great item to sell because of the gold and chips on them, but they may not always be worth your time to take apart.
Punched or shredded hard drives are not always easy to sell because they won’t be easy to sort afterward. The boards and the aluminum will get mixed together, and then you will have to deal with a lot of sorting and separation, which will not be easy.
