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Probably a question that has been answered but is it best to sell whole drives or dismantle? I plan on bringing my e waste in physically and not shipping when I do get around to sorting it all. I’m just wondering what’s the best route to go leave the city arms complete or tear them down same goes for the other drives. Thanks in advance.

Depends on your situation. If you're able to ship them (unless you can drive) to Boardsort cheaply it may be easier to leave them whole. If shipping them whole isn't cost effective for you then it comes down to whether you have the time to dismantle them. If you do the CD/DVD logic board is the main thing you're after to send to Boardsort. Almost everything else can go to your local scrap yard. Steel, motors, a couple other boards and other non-metal materials mostly. Sometimes copper, stainless, brass and magnesium.

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

The board is the money spot for most drives. You can also sell working boards quite easily. SATA boards run $5-100 or so. ATA boards tend to be $10-$50. True IDE boards and anything older when working can get a few hundred on the right day.
Reselling most CD/DVD boards is usually more difficult than it’s worth except for UHD, modern burners, and discontinued drives like HD-DVD.
External expired disc format boards can fetch real major money though, like double density CDr and HD-DVD R.
Disc drive motors can fetch a few dollars online.

Hard drives give you a clean aluminium case. If you have a buyer the neodymium magnets are about 80c per pound.

Most working tape drive boards start around $20. But any LTO compliant boards run in the hundreds. Good un-stretched bands run in double digits too.

For scrap? I strip hard drives since I have the right tools on hand and a yard for all the parts.
Disc drives I’ll strip the motor and lens array for myself and I toss them in shred.

Tape drives I always fix so little gets scraped except dead parts

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I've recently been noticing on a really small scale that leaving them whole is bringing a higher value than taking the boards off and selling them seperately. I'm only referring to the 3.5" SATA Hard Drives at the moment. For just 2 hard drives, it was roughly a $0.70 to $0.80 increase leaving whole verses selling the boards in one group & rest of hard drive in the other group. These 2 drives were also a 1TB & 2TB hard drive if that adds anything to it, but so far leaving them whole at the moment is paying better in my opinion.

I’ve always walked the plank, so to speak, on supporting Boardsort and being honest in general. (BS pays more than any other reliable reputable online scrap site).

I’m also a tech junkie. A truck enthusiast, and more than a few call me a tech genius or god.
And no, that never went to my head.



Scrap is the last resort. If you can sell it hit ebay, whatnot, offer up, next door, freecycle etc.

But for the op
A 10mb true IDE HDD working will net you $500+
An LTO 1 tape deck doa will get you the same
Dead Double density cd drive sell for $700-1200 dead.

And when you go to externals, a dead plextor 620 will fetch you $4k or more
Any dead plextor starts at $150 if you have more than 10 feedback ebay.

I’ve paid $1k for plextor disc drives, 500+ for dead tape drives,
The largest computer component purchase I ever made was for an 80mb true IDE drive at $3400 ish.

I’m aware this goes against Boardsort’s business but I’ve *never* been shy in saying scrapping is the last resort for an item.


Retro-tech has never been hotter and a look at sold prices from the top 5 auction companies tells the tale!

Video games, computers, audio, a 32” repaired CRT Sony cross-wave monitor just sold at Hunters for $550.
The same monitor sold doa on ebay a few months back for $300



If you have the time and patience, post it.
If. It, Boardsort will pay you more than most will scrap wise.

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I had to Google "plextor"...

You are Either a gen older than I, or younger.

Plextor drives were literally tanks. Tanks of the computer world that made rugged laptops look like a joke.

The lasers were 3x as powerful and just scraped by (most models) the U.S. regulations and you could import more powerful ones if you had the will and resources yy
Coupled with cell level disc rippers they could and would recover the worst of the worst failed optical discs.
They read EVERY optical format from the standard cd/dvd to DTSD, 4c and 6c. They ignored CCM so could read, play, and allowed backup of game CDs and DVDs.
The boards had (iffy licensing) onboard processors for mpeg, jvc, DTS, vidx, tct, waveM, the list of supported disc formats is a few pages here post long.
And they posted the firmware raw online on multiple ftp sites and gopher threads.

They were and are the diamond standard of disc drives. The still sell most models used in the triple digits on auction sites used for a reason.



A Plex drive and ISObuster (more research for you) and when all else failed a Plex drive would be able to read it.


The 400 and 500 series working with a guarantee will always fetch hundreds. Dead they over get close to a hundred.
The later 3, 4, and 5k series can get to a grand with all the parts and accessories.


I love and die by my 5250R2. Again with ISOB I’ve salvaged discs for customers that most companies said nope by looks of the disc alone. And I don’t charge west cost prices for a few minutes of work and walk away.

Stay away from any after 2009 (the reflashed LG drives after that point) if they are more than a few hundred dollars but if you can find a real pre 09 for under a grand, you’ll never regret it.

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If you want to get a better idea of just how important and how loved these drive are try a search
+plextor +retro
Or
+plextor +recovery.

In house Plextor drives cost a fortune, they are hoarded, loved, and babied.
Every system I have that supports ATA has one. I swapped the drive in my Mac cube with one.

I’m not alone in my extreme love for these drives. My will even has specifics on who gets the drives and equipment with them. They’re not for sale.


When they were independent they were the last of thr IDGAF era of computing. Countries banned them.. Multiple states here did. Congress punted on banning them thrice.


They totally disregarded and bypassed any and all copyright protections. They read and process the disc at pit level.
They ignore multi faze (CRP by splitting the disc contents) recording limits and ignore the TOC.

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Had no idea old Plextors were that sought after, gonna look twice at any optical drive before it lands in the scrap pile now.