Boardsort.com

it doesnt make sense to ship them from seattle... anyone know a good ewaste buyer in seattle? my shredder cannot handle the motor in the middle consistently so i gotta give up on em for now :(

Best that you could do is separate the motors and R/W arms out from the rest of the drive. The R/W arms can go with the motors and your local scrap yard can buy them as electric motors. The top cover of the drive is usually dirty aluminum or stainless steel. The shell is cast aluminum, and the platters usually go with sheet aluminum. There is a connector piece that connects the ribbon wire going to the R/W arm to the board. You could fill a flat rate box with those and send that in to Boardsort as cable ends.

Do keep in mind the top lid is often two layers. Stainless for one and aluminium for the other in most cases.

_________________
-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

If the boards are non-existant, and all you have is the hard drive, even if you take the time to strip them all down, don't bother shipping anything you find to anywhere. You will not make money.
Best bet is to crack open (dare I say it) the yellow pages and make some calls, or if that doesn't blow your hair back, try the iscrap app. A lot of scrap yards either don't know/care about the app or choose not to participate in uploading their prices for everyone (including their competitors) to see, but it will give you an idea of the yards that exist around you and you can pick up the phone from there to inquire about the drives. Who knows? Some yards may be more generous with their pricing than others.
Point is, stuff like these are local scrap yard items (where you are making .12/lb for dirty aluminum) and shipping costs will eat any pipe dream of a profit.

I found the easiest way to remove the motor is with a punch/press.
Manually, a 1/8” punch is under $2. A 4-5 inch long carbon steel bar.
Turn the case upside down; bottom up.
Line up the punch in the middle
Whack that sticky bastard hard and firm.

Most disk motors are screwed in or glued in. Very few differ from that. Screws can easily be removed. A punch solves most glued motors.
The worst case is you wind up with a half split motor. (A bunch of copper coils stuck to the aluminium case). And if your shredder can handle the thickness, but not density, even there you’re back in business.

The single factor that troubles shredders when it comes to drive motors is geometry. A phenomenon known as diametric density. If the “teeth” are too large or too small they will jam. This is based on the the low footprint of the surface area:height ratios.
The weakest points of a aluminium casing disk drive motor are the very centre and the absolute outer edge.
I found so far the the worst made motors have a resistance of at least 500fp3. Which is the lightest weight non-“paper” shredder I have.

Ps: for those looking for low weight scrap shredders I’ve suggested before look into the Bulldog. These “paper” shredders put out 300-450fp3 of pressure. Per rotation with a 3 tooth:6” bar. The 13” shredder has 7 teeth.
Essentially 100 pounds per full spin. They turn most populated boards into green powder easily. Just remove heatsinks and anything wider/taller than the mouth

_________________
-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

Btw you need to remove top and platters to punch out the motor. Just FYI.

_________________
-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.

Yes, I have found the best method to remove the motors, assuming they aren't fastened with T8 screws to the chassis, is indeed a hammer/punch/vise/lots of energy.
This is assuming he/she wants to labor over 2000 pounds of hard drives, bent already, mind you, which makes the task a bit more laborious.