How To: Destroy, Recycle, & Scrap Hard Drives

properly scrapping hard drivesHard 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 are used to 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, you want to make sure that they are destroyed in the most efficient and secure way.

Think Before Your Scrap Your Hard Drives

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 times 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 make sure that the hard drives are completely broken down and there are not any 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 that you will be able to see them shredded or punched and know that your data is now gone forever.

Destruction of hard drives for scrap metal

How To Sell Scrap Shredded or Punched 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 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 be able to 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 the chips that are on them, but 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 afterwards. The boards and the aluminum will get mixed together and then you have to deal with a lot of sorting and separation that will not be very easy.

Find A Scrap Yard On The iScrap App


Related Articles: