[ale] Off Topic, hard drive shredder

Greg Clifton gccfof5 at gmail.com
Fri Aug 5 16:52:08 EDT 2011


We actually had that discussion maybe 6,9,12 (?) months ago and it even went
so far as some moderately serious discussion about having a thermite party,
with one contributor saying they might be able to swing a location. I'm all
for it!

On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Tim Watts <tim at cliftonfarm.org> wrote:

> Gotta say I'm a little disappointed at all the reasonable responses to
> this.
>
> There was a time when any mention of disk destruction would inevitably
> spark a multi-day round table of C4 and other pyrotechnic fantasies. And
> would eventually devolve into some kind of weird topic involving
> lubricants before someone would finally step in and say "Wow, what just
> happened here?"
>
> What happened ALE? <sniffle/>
>
>
> On Fri, 2011-08-05 at 11:42 -0400, planas wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > On Fri, 2011-08-05 at 09:35 -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> > > On 8/5/11 12:47 AM, Sparr wrote:
> > > > I've recently come into possession of a large security disintegrator,
> > > > designed for shredding things like hard drives and tapes and such.
> I'm
> > > > trying to figure out what to do with it. Selling it is, of course, an
> > > > option, but I was thinking of possibly starting up a small security
> > > > business to destroy hard drives for people. Is there a market for
> that
> > > > in Atlanta?
> > > It would make a big difference if your apparatus of mindless
> destruction
> > > were mobile.  But you are going to have a waste stream like nobody's
> > > business; some of that will be leaded solder, which is toxic.  One
> thing
> > > you could certainly do without too much difficulty would be to separate
> > > out the ground-up magnets; run the refuse past a piece of iron that
> gets
> > > scraped off periodically.  I don't know what all the composition of
> disk
> > > drive magnets would be in the field - I'd suspect samarium cobalt and
> > > neodymium.  What you recover could potentially be press-formed into
> > > fairly decent magnets, suitable for electricity generation, but as far
> > > as actually separating out the metals into bulk material with a net
> > > positive value, I dunno.
> > >
> > > Possessing this device only makes sense if it's actively being used,
> so,
> > > congratulations on having entered the waste processing business! :)
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > Once you grind up the hard drive you could attempt to recover the
> > metals present using a combination of physical and chemical methods.
> > The metals should be a reasonable purity to sell .
> >
> > If limited metal recovery is done you probably will have D- series
> > (unless the EPA has a specific classification) hazardous waste. I do
> > not know the current prices for hazardous waste disposal. But when I
> > was handling waste disposal I found there was roughly a 10x difference
> > between the charges of non-hazardous waste and a hazardous waste.
> >
> > Off topic stupidity, most people do not realize that fluorescent
> > lights should be disposed as a hazardous waste - mercury is the
> > culprit.
> >
> > --
> > Jay Lozier
> > jslozier at gmail.com
> > _______________________________________________
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> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
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> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>
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