More money from Hard Drives - Data recovery boards

OK... Thought it was time to share another little gem here.

If you are contracted to destroy all hard drives you get in and do not have permission to sell them as working drives (which would be the better option), consider testing and then selling the printed circuit boards for data recovery.

You can get from $10-$50 for these boards, depending on how rare they are and who is looking for them. If you get newer drives or server drives you will be able to sell the boards for good money. Put them on Ebay and see what happens... that is, if you have some of your free listings left.

It will be very hit or miss... but it may be worth it.

You might also be selling them to people who are using them for illegal purposes. Be careful.

Explain that? How would they use a recycled pc board illegally? Not that it bothers me that you said that, just strange concept to me.... that's all.

To recover information from a hard drive... Isn't the reason for destroying them to ensure that nobody can recover any data from them? Someone who knows what they are doing could potentially recover sensitive information.

I'm not saying we should be paranoid but the potential is there.

no info is stored on the board, only the disk inside

It's common practice to change a HD board in efforts to retrieve data. There are many bonafide companies who charge absorbitive rates to do so. Last I checked rates for this sevice(several years ago) a basic charge was in the $800-$1000 range. If you are not restricted in reusing the complete drive, old drives can be sought after for just this purpose (if they are hard enough to come by), it just depends on what drive they are attempting to repair, and which parts they need to do so. You will however, find more drive failures are due to mechanical malfunction by far, than are due to a bad board.

Originally Posted by AuburnEwaste

To recover information from a hard drive... Isn't the reason for destroying them to ensure that nobody can recover any data from them? Someone who knows what they are doing could potentially recover sensitive information.

Yeah, the data is on the platters and the platters should be physically destroyed... no data on the pcbs...

I have repaired 2 that had the boards fry and we used a donor drive to get them up and running... about the only repair you can do without opening them. I have tried a platter swap and had very bad results. We have sent drives into recovery shops and spent over $2000 for the service...

The best bet you will have with these are newer drives... like 100GB or better... it's a shame killing drives like that...

I'm not talking about taking information off the PCB. I meant they could use it to recover information from another drive with it. I didn't mean to cause a fuss about it, just something to think about.

Originally Posted by AuburnEwaste

I'm not talking about taking information off the PCB. I meant they could use it to recover information from another drive with it. I didn't mean to cause a fuss about it, just something to think about.

No fuss here. I would just caution the OP from selling HD PCB's from drives they promised to destroy the infromation from within. More than likely nothing would ever come of it. But when dealing with information one needs to hedge from liability.

my 44 magnum works every time on these, puts a nice big hole thru all of the platters

Originally Posted by Jeremiah

I believe this is incorrect. Most hard-drive PCBs have between 2mb-16mb of memory stored in a cashe. 2mb is nothing in terms of pictures, vid, etc, but is plenty of space for documents containing SSN, credit cards, etc. If what i said is correct, than information could be accessed via the pcb. I always drill a hole in them before recycling. Here is a link that may help What Is a Cache on a Hard Drive? | eHow.com

Trying to recover data from a HD buffer would equal trying to remove information from a stick of RAM. Both are emptied with each power down. This is why in a system crash everything you'd been writing is lost, due to it having been stored in RAM (either on the main boards RAM or the HDs RAM makes no difference), it's gone.

Trying to recover data from a HD buffer would equal trying to remove information from a stick of RAM. Both are emptied with each power down. This is why in a system crash everything you'd been writing is lost, due to it having been stored in RAM (either on the main boards RAM or the HDs RAM makes no difference), it's gone.

Correct...if there is a residual data left in memory on power down (like a ghost stuck in time), it is totally gone when renergized on power up in my opinion. So, maybe CIA or FBI could do something, but I doubt if a random drive from a random unknown sorce would have money thrown at it to see if they had a SSN that had good credit or a bank account that had money in it. But, the chance is there. Technally a platter with a hole on it still has 95% of its data on it. THey might not spin up, but you can extract the data from it by pulling a magnetic image of what is left. That would cost a lot, but the chance is there.

I hope I am not sounding smarty pants, but I am trying to indicate the statistics behind data destruction. Plus I had a kinda crappy day, so sorry.



Pulling the control board and deguassing, or shredding is the best bet for data destruction. It leaves the most useless or unpredictable intact remaining data. Also, software triple write stuff if you think it has a resale value.