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 Post subject: HDD read write head
PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 4:43 pm 

Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2019 6:55 pm
Posts: 555
What is the white read write head made out of? What is the purity of the rhodium in the other read write heads? What else is in them? The other head next to the white one is from a 5 1/4 inch drive.

Thank you!


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 Post subject: Re: HDD read write head
PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 7:09 pm 
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I’m not sure how to approach this beyond the most obvious (I don’t really know nor understand the how and why).

From what I know, and can read:
The head is itself a metallic ceramic containing multiple components that create different magnetic fields. One of the components is a small piece of rhodium, a paramagnet chemically inert transition metal. I don’t know why that was chosen. Or how it works. Just that it does. I make the assumption it’s relatively pure.
I cut the whole head end off. And keep them in old med bottles. I fill up a bottle 1/3 to 1/2 full and send it to my contact.
I do know that the actual rhodium weight in that barely registers. A quarter ounce of hard drive heads can get me a variable rate of a few hundred dollars. And it takes a lot of drives to reach that point.
Is it worth it? For me with a private offer from a buyer... and the fact I disassemble the drives to that point where the arm(s) are already just laying there... no reason not to grab my scissors and snip.

The more realistic statement is I already get the drives to that point
I have a buyer.

If you have both then it’s worth the few seconds of snipping what a standard yard would pay for as shred Al, dirty Al, etc.


Basic facts, the bigger the drive the bigger the heads. The bigger the heads the more of each material.
Very little beyond size has changed since the earliest spinning platter systems of the 60s which is way a drive today costs nothing (an relation to history) and a 50Kb platter reader from 50 years ago goes for the rate of a mid-range car.

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