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 Post subject: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Mon Feb 13, 2017 6:32 pm 

Joined: Fri Jul 01, 2016 6:55 pm
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Location: Texas
I think have seen somewhere, they used to use either gold or gold plated platters in hard drives. When were those being used?


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 Post subject: Re: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Mon Feb 13, 2017 7:49 pm 
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Very early drives, usually full height 3.5 inch and most 5.25 inch drives.
Anything predateing ata has a good chance. Though I've never found them in original IDE half height I've been told there are some.

Anything ata and IDE 1.2, and later will NOT be gold.

Anything larger than 5 inches has a fairly good chance of being gold (or better).

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 Post subject: Re: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Mon Feb 13, 2017 8:28 pm 

Joined: Fri Jul 01, 2016 6:55 pm
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Ohh ok I bet the hard drive I have isn't near old enough. I found one in some telecommunications equipment that's marked with permanent marker "revised 4-17-96", I'm guessing it's mid 90's at best.


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 Post subject: Re: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Thu Feb 16, 2017 4:25 pm 
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Sounds like it wound up in a used system, I've worked for a few rebuilders over the years and we all had the bad habits of marking up components we tested.

You're probably past the standardisation point where some basic industry standards were agreed to among builders. The second great hard drive shakeup from 89-92 (part of the 4th pc shakeup) was the massive string of bankruptcies and buyouts caused by nobody's this working with anybody's that.
As the controllers were segmented from all in and on the drive to the hardware controller only and the translator on the board a world of mess was created with all the variations in drives.
As with any computer scrap if your looking for a retirement fund purchase the best is high end mid 80s non-clone pc compatible equipment. Especially industrial computers.
For two years Dec used 24kt gold PLATED on carbon-manganese nickel platters. Whole platters like these can be sold to almost any jewellery shop that buys plate; at the same rate of gold plated nickel rings and necklaces. Weigh it up and do the math. 1/8 24kt a typical 5 ounce 5.25 inch platter is worth about $60-$80. The aluminium platinum platters with the rhodium coating in some quantum Bigfoot drives can fetch over $400 each.

The things to remember on this stuff is there were very short runs of test units in the sub 100 numbers; many cases a few dozen or less. They were sold to/with prior knowledge, specific end users for testing and came with all sorts of special warranties and benefits. As time went by and management and directors changed they were forgotten, scrapped tossed or resold and generally lost.
The two platters from the QBF that are $400 each is a nice payday but the whole drive with them will fetch many thousands from select collectors.

The other catch is there is absolutely no way to know what something is till you open it. Numbers mean nothing in the pre 90s era. Ive made hundreds of dollars off $10 computers from surplus sales, and lost hundreds on ebay purchases of servers.
I generally gave up on paying premiums (and buying for pm in general) because it's hit and miss.

Like gambling I've always suggested you spend as much as you want but never more than you're willing to loose. Finding a double sided gold PGA spark 16 (a test run of risc 32 CPUs with x16 translation) or a Russian 8080 platinum cap will be one of the happiest moments of your life! But you'll fail more often then you win.
The good news is your odds are better than the lottery (7/29) but not as good as vegas slots (9/10).

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 Post subject: Re: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Thu Feb 16, 2017 10:28 pm 

Joined: Sun May 17, 2015 4:17 pm
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Location: Md Eastern Shore
When you mentioned bigfoot drives I checked my old stash and found 3 bigfoots a CY 4.3, a TX 4.0, and a TS 12.7 . Now the funny part is one site online was selling them from $200 to $500 depending in part on the size of gigs. How do you know what you have with these prices jumping all over the place. Also as a scrapper how do I know what the platters are made of if I do take them apart?
With this pricing I found, it kind of looks like what I have is not the high high dollar harddrives.


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 Post subject: Re: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Thu Feb 16, 2017 11:59 pm 
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The cy series may have gold platters in the 5.25 inch drives.
The strange stuff was all the minimal release 800 meg and standard release 1.2 gig 5.25 drives.
None of the T series have anything that I've heard of that was bizarre.
I'll hit this better later for you.

First update: looks like the 800 drives were pre commercial release for dates of 1994 and 1995 on the labels.

Second update; before the Bigfoot monicker
You're looking for Q280 (80 meg), Q120 (112 meg) and Q250 (50 meg) for the best platter value

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 Post subject: Re: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 4:15 am 

Joined: Sun May 17, 2015 4:17 pm
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Location: Md Eastern Shore
Thank you for your time. I found another bigfoot tx 8gig in my stash along with an apple quantum prodrive lps 250meg scsi 1993, an ibm wds-380s 80 meg scsi 2/18/92, maxtor lxt340a 340 meg. My question is anything special on these drives? The harddrive boards are full size of harddrive so would it be better to take apart on these and any other harddrives with at least 3/4 size of harddrive because of the price of harddrive boards? It seems a full size harddrive board may weigh enough to bring what the full harddrive would bring since a harddrive weighs about a pound and there would still be value in the case,platters, sensor arms and such.


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 Post subject: Re: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 1:00 pm 
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In the pre 20 gigabyte era many of the drives were made with magnesium, not aluminium. But a good portion of the drive's weight is it's shell.
I've been an advocate of stripping out hard drives for quit a few reasons.
1) selling drives on ebay is hot or miss do to fraudulent buyers who claim damaged goods refunds even on items sold as "parts or repair"!!
2) you'll never LOOSE on stripping a drive bare; terms of scrap value.
3) there's ALWAYS a chance of something strange inside.

Aluminium shells of modern drives is currently 38-56 cents per lb.
magnesium is 42-54 cents
Manganese is 48-64 cents.

Finding gold platters is always nice, and even recent drives can hold treasures.
If you have enough and it sounds like you do it may take longer than tossing hole drives in a bin, but scrapping them out could be worthwhile once drive heads (rhodium) start adding up. Few dozen drivers in your into double digits on that alone.


On that Apple, if it's clearly branded I'd toss THAT one on ebay as a collectible. Apple stuff has a good following.

That iBM drive may have gold platters.
They'll look like a slightly greenish brown. But most likely a lower class of such. Worth about 2.50-3 per lb. they're electrically mist plated.
That said if you take a few apart you can instantly tell valuable gold platters from thin plate by weight. The plated aluminium is quite lite. Where expensive gold platters will weigh a half ounce or more each.
The expensive gold platters (and other high content precious metals) almost completely disappeared with the transition to 3.5 inch drives. The smaller motors in the smaller drives had trouble spinning fast enough with the heavy metals; and the switch to platinum or gold mist plating became the norm.

The other test for heavy brown platters is to drop it a fair distance onto a hard surface. A glass platter will break (though not shatter don't worry) and that would be nickel carbide plated glass rather than gold on al-ni.
Ni-c glass was used in many inexpensive (relatively) server drives that were intended for long term backup. They're the least volatile magnetic methd storage but extremely slow. The low prices made them ideal for long term storage where speed wouldn't be an issue.

Glass platters are also used in very small drives (2.5 inch and below) for reasons i still don't understand or agree with but they're worth the same as any other run of the mill hard drive platter.

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 Post subject: Re: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 1:38 am 

Joined: Sun May 17, 2015 4:17 pm
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Location: Md Eastern Shore
thank you, looks like I will be taking the harddrives apart. Does Boardsort do any thing with gold platters or do I need to check with jewelers? Again thank you for your time.


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 Post subject: Re: Hard drive platters
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 2:18 am 
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Boardsort has one rate that is the same for any and all platters.
Jewerly buyers will always be interested in the heavy gold platters. For the lighter mist ones you'll want to find a scrap yard that takes precious metals.

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