Boardsort.com

Is there anything to practically do with these or just toss in shred?

Depends:
Always pull the controller. Obviously.
Beyond that you’ll get a small head board with the optical sensors. Peripheral or low telco. One or two low or mid boards.
Steel and stainless. Plastic.
It’s the case that decides for me. If the case/tray is magnesium, aluminium, or manganese: I strip the drive. If it’s steel, it’s shred to me.

The large old cd/dvd drives I usually strip just because they weigh a few pounds and make it worthwhile for the relatively quick dissection.

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

I just got like 50 of these...while they don’t take long to break down I don’t see this making any sense because the controller boards are so tiny and weigh next to nothing. Am I wrong?

(Not looking for the “what is your time worth” schpeel haha I just don’t see how, generally, practically, these might be worth breaking down)

For most. No.
If you recycle a lot the ease of literally breaking them open with a 2” screw driver and a nail and screw trimmer makes controller extraction quick and simple.
Doing it “correctly” takes a few minutes
Going horror film on it takes seconds for most drives.
Stab stab stab cut pull pop.

Stab the three longest sides along the edge half way between the corners.
Cut vertically on the longest side, through the case, components whatever
Pull the shell (use gloves or grips) open sardine can style.
Line up your driver under the middle screw under the board and pop.
$0.60 per minute is $36 per hour. Not bad in my book.

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

Hourly, no. But it’s less than $10 in scrap to process 50 of these...I don’t think I’d mess with breaking down 50 of anything for $10 lol

in the shred pile they go!

I have found some really nice boards in these. They are small but I would put them in with my hard drive boards. They are about 1.5" by 2.5" and have up to 7 ic's on them. I even had a couple with ceramic ics on them.

I would say any laptop pentium4 or older don't shred.

As far as boardsort goes: Really shouldn’t do that!
You may have gotten away with it (not being mean, just in general) a few times but someone will flag that eventually. And they won’t be all that happy.
Portable drive boards go with the rest of the CD boards.

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

I have not ever sent any hard drive or cd/dvd boards to boardsort.

Just sayin that some cd/dvd boards look to be a higher quality then some hard drive boards and if throw them into the shred pile you are losing money.

Ah. I follow. And agree.
At least I’d pull the boards.

If it’s thin sheet aluminium I’d happily pull it apart caveman style with couple of standard screwdrivers. Just because brute force makes a sun minute job of them.
Anything heavier and I pop the board and move on.

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

Scrapping aside, if you have the room to hang onto these for a minute and don't mind doing the research, assuming they work (or you could test them) they are fairly easy sales on Ebay. Newer ones being desirable, and of course the older, external drives are fairly easy sales as well.
Even at $10 bucks with free shipping, after fees and shipping costs (use Pirate Ship!) you still get $7ish bucks per unit. Adds up. Much nicer than light iron shred, but I could see being easily fed up with the volume of the drives if youre disassembling a metric ton of laptops.