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When scraping hard drives, do you separate the boards or just sell the whole hard drive? Is it worth the time to separate the boards? About how long does it take?

Working hard drives are worth far more than scrap, especially if you can get a large quantity of the same size and model together.

Assuming they are scrap, it's worth separating them if you have very cheap labor. Most of the boards are held on by several screws, so you have to factor in the time it takes to remove them. Also, sometimes it can be hard to sell hard drives without boards.

To give an idea of value, I buy the items for these prices:

$0.95/lb for hard drives with boards attached
$10.75/lb for hard drive boards
$0.40/lb for hard drives without boards

I kinda assumed that it wasn't worth separating the boards from the hard drives, but $10.75 a pound for the boards is so damn tempting. I may try a few to measure time spent versus output.

Always pull your HDD boards off. That .40 cents a pound is a low price. Our scrap yard pays old sheet and cast price for HDD with boards removed. Shop it around, as always.

I've always been offered around $.40 for hard drives without the boards. I'm not dealing in large quantities, but I will start asking around. Thanks.

If you're getting O/S or cast price on hard drives with the boards removed, you're doing very well. No one near me will pay that price for them.

Hard drives without boards have zero value for parts, and as scrap they have considerable steel and stainless contamination. Stainless contamination is a big issue with aluminum. They're also very labor intensive to clean to get the remaining value out of them, and the markets for the neodymium magnets and other alloys inside are much softer than they used to be.

Dr. Cadmium wrote:If you're getting O/S or cast price on hard drives with the boards removed, you're doing very well. No one near me will pay that price for them.

Hard drives without boards have zero value for parts, and as scrap they have considerable steel and stainless contamination. Stainless contamination is a big issue with aluminum. They're also very labor intensive to clean to get the remaining value out of them, and the markets for the neodymium magnets and other alloys inside are much softer than they used to be.

I know, but I swear it's true. Was very happy to unload two full gaylords on them for that price. And, looks like they will get the next one as well!

Boards on hard drives are worth more than normal green board. always worth taking them off. if they have a strange screw head (like soemthing other than Philips or hex) a nice sharp drill bit always works...

Old topic, worthy of an update. I used prices from boardsort.com, but other prices I can find would have similar results (or worse)

Total weight of all the hard drives: 35 pounds. Boardsort pays $.80 for hard drives with boards, so these are worth $28.

Broken down weight and value: two pounds of hard drive boards time $9 per pound equals $18. Thirty-three pounds of hard drives without boards time $.35 per pound equals $11.55. Total value of board down hard drive pile is $29.55.

I suppose it depends on what you think your time is worth, but it doesn't strike me as worth the effort.

Well it all depends on your ability to stockpile the HDD boards. While the price is kinda low now, I have seen these boards as high as 16-17 dollars a pound. They do not take up a lot of space so I just pile them up until the prices spike. You can get quite a few in a large flat rate box if you stack them nice. Then tape it up and stash it away for a rainy day!