If you have old hard drives lying around in your office, it's time to get rid of them. No matter how much you think you might need that old hard drive, chances are it's time to get rid of it. Not only will you be protecting the data on your computer from prying eyes, but recycling your hard drives will also be protecting the environment. If you want to learn more about how to recycle your hard drives properly, keep reading.
1. Why you should recycle your hard drives
It’s safe to say that our lives revolve around technology. We use our computers and smartphones for just about everything these days, from checking email and social media to paying our bills and shopping. And that’s why it’s so important to recycle your old computer hard drives.According to Optimal Tech, a website dedicated to the art and science of maximizing technological resources, a hard drive can easily recycle at a rate of 99.7%:
If your hard drive is seven years old, chances are you can recycle it at a 99.7% rate. Before you get too attached to your old hard drive, remember it not to be a shiny new iPod. Each time your old drive fails, it’ll send bits and bytes scattering across the internet, potentially harming the health of young children.
Of course, old hard drives are not the only ones your company makes use of. Drive bays, server rooms, storagerooms, and other shared spaces on your campus all need to be properly managed and recycled.
The best way to recycle your old hard drives is on a physical storage unit or by putting the bits and bytes back online in a computer. A broken hard drive will never be able to recycle itself, so your best bet is to get a robot to do it for you. Not only will this save you the time and effort of looking up how to recycle your old hard drive while armed with a 15-minute Google search, but the artificial intelligence will be able to determine what can be recycled and what simply needs to be thrown out.
If you’re lucky enough to have work that can accommodate several hard drives, you can move them to a single storage area. According to Optimal Tech, dual-bay computers are best for recycling. When placed in the middle of your desk and connected with a power supply, these computers can recycle at the same rate as two single-bay computers.
2. Disassembling your hard drive the right way
To safely remove a hard drive from a computer, you must first remove the hard drive from the computer chassis. The chassis is what houses the hard drive and helps to protect it from damage while also connecting it to the rest of the computer system. To remove the hard drive from the computer chassis, you first need to open the computer case.Open the computer case by prying the two small drawstrings near the exterior (near the camera and microphone openings) using your fingers or a small Phillips screwdriver.
After pulling the two drawstrings free, you’ll have a clear view of both sides of the hard drive. Next, you’ll want to carefully remove a screw from the outer edge of the hard drive’s plastic shell. Keep in mind that the top of the plastic shell is plastic, so you’ll need to be very careful not to remove too much of it.
Next, you’ll want to carefully pull the hard drive and its internals away from the plastic shell. First, use a metal ruler or a knife to gently separate the two outer disks from the rest of the hard drive. Next, you need to carefully remove the inner disk from the plastic shell. Finally, carefully extract the drive from the hard drive stand. Next, you’ll want to completely empty the six SATA 6.0 GB (Gen1) and four SATA 2.0 GB (Gen2) connectors from the back of the hard drive.
In the bottom corners of the plastic hard drive stand, you‘ll notice holes for four SATA power, four 4-pin IDE connectors, and the two USB 2.0 connectors. The video-out and audio-out jacks can be removed using a Phillips-head screwdriver, and the reset switch and ECG port can be removed with a modular Phillips-head screwdriver. Next, you’ll need to properly empty the RAM module.
Disconnect all cables from the internal connectors of the motherboard and pull the hard drive out. Next, install the new hard drive into a VIA Network Card slot, using the four screw holes on the bottom side of the VIA Adapter card.
3. How to destroy your hard drive the right way
If you’ve got confidential documents stored on your hard drive and you need to get rid of them, you’ll want to destroy your hard drive the right way. Last year, the US Department of Defense published an article on how to do this. The process is called degaussing and it involves putting your hard drive in a strong magnetic field.Degaussing literally means “to turn the magnetic field on its head.”
Hard drives store digital data. The data and the magnetic fields between the magnetic particles in the drives interact with each other. When one side of the disk gets a negative charge, the magnetic field changes and the information stored on the disk becomes distorted. When a positive charge takes place, that difference creates a clean path for data to move through the disk. The data is still stored, but since it’s in a backward-and-forward motion, it becomes harder to read. When a disk is degaussed, most of the data stored on it is destroyed and the bits are no longer able to be used.
A steel-like magnet is put between the disk and the degaussing device, and as the disk spins, the magnet attracts and sometimes repels the debris, sending it flying towards an absorbent material. This technique, also known as garbage dispersal, makes sure that more information remains in the oldest parts of your hard drive.
Fortunately, this process is quick, efficient, and safe. All you need to do is dump the hard drive, insert fresh blank media, and start the computer. Hard drives make up about 10% of your computer’s weight, but they aren’t very energy efficient. In other words, they’re bulky, heavy, pricey, and if they sit in your cup holder for long periods of time, they can get very hot.
But turning a disk into a pile of sand isn’t a sustainable solution. If you had a bunch of old hard drives sitting around, you’d have to vacuum up each one and recycling wouldn’t be an option. To make better use of your old drives, you’d need a recycling system.
4. What happens to recycled electronics
In the United States, many electronic products are not recycled. According to a report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), only about 29 percent of TVs, 14 percent of computers, and 7 percent of monitors end up in recycling programs. Many other products do not get recycled at all.
Rather than make you roll your eyes and throw old hard drives in the cart, it’s more beneficial to protect yourself and your data. If you’re using your laptop or computer every day, you’re likely writing a lot on it, downloading a lot of files, and opening lots of apps. These activities use a lot of power. Even if you think you only open one app a day, many could be running in the background.
In 2020, millions of hard drives failed in people’s or equipment’s trash bins, creating hazardous toxic waste dumps. As you’re using your computer, it’s important to ensure that it’s not a hazard to the environment. Hard drive failures are also becoming more common, indicating people’s use of aging computers and hard drives.
Old hard drives can cause a host of problems. The majority of PC users who lose or break their hard drives end up reinstalling the operating system or purchasing a new computer, potentially spending hundreds or thousands of dollars. Hard drives also cost corporations a lot of money to recycle, as they take up valuable industrial space and take up precious space in landfills. If you’re storing personal files on your old hard drive, the additional space could be more valuable to you than a new one.
The Environmental Protection Agency offers these tips for properly recycling hard drives:
If you want to learn more about how to recycle a hard drive simply, you can own one, bring it to a recycling center, and receive a free hard drive recycling guide.
Don’t ditch your computer just yet. As with any computer, it’s important to inspect the hard drive for damage before destroying it.
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