I pose this question to the list because I want to get a the opinion of a group of data recovery people of various skills. I'm not trying to sell anything. If anything I guess I'm trying to get a gauge for the potential market for such a thing or if such a thing already exists.

Full-disclosure: I don't work for this company, but I do have a vested interest in keeping a friendly relationship w/ the guy since he could potentially be a really good source for parts for any of my (and maybe your) future recoveries. Plus it just kills me to see these drives just get shredded when I feel like they might be good for something to someone in the DR community.

Through an unusual chain of events, I've befriended the head of sales at my local electronics recycling and data destruction company. He was VERY interested to have me come over and talk to him about data recovery in general and to find out if there were any other sales avenues he had not considered when it came to degaussed hard drives besides paying some people to rip off the pcb's and throw them in a box and the drive in another box, then send them both off for metal recycling and recovery.

At first I thought this could be a potentially great source for pcb's of all kinds. However, it quickly became clear that the problem becomes testing the PCB's since, well, the drives have been degaussed, so the firmware and servo data is all gone. In the end, you'd be taking a gamble on a PCB from a drive like this, since there would be no assurance that it was even any good. And what good would it do to spend 10-20 bucks on a pcb that MIGHT work when you can probably spend 40-80 on a whole drive that you can easily test.

Next I thought it could be a good source for head assemblies, but, again, the same problem exists.. and if these things are thrown into big bins in bulk, then shipped on big cargo trucks, and then delivered on pallets.. they probably haven't been treated all that great..

So that leaves me with my latest question.. Does a degaussed hard drive have any value to anyone beyond that of the scrap aluminum and precious metal recovery? The latest "sales channel" idea I came up with was "Would you pay money for a degaussed hard drive so you could have one to open and practice on before opening up the real thing for a client?" Most of us have likely worked on the smaller capacity drives with two platters and there isn't much to those.. but what about the newer drives? and laptop drives w/ all their tiny parts? I know I've had a few occasions where I really was grateful to have bought two spares before doing a head swap and getting an idea of what the insides looked like and how I was going to move stuff around before doing the real thing. I guess this is somewhat akin to asking is there a price for a "cadaver" drive for data recovery practice vs. a "donor drive". And if you get a PCB that might still be good out of the deal, all the better right?

So the question is, would you pay for a cadaver drive, and if so how much? What if the drive was one of the newer 750gb, 1tb, 1.5 tb drives, with the crazy platter spacers?

Thoughts?

Feel free to reply off-list if you would prefer and if there is enough interest I can compile a single reply with all the opinions.

P.S. I wasn't sure which forum section to post this on, but since I'm not selling anything, I thought this was the most appropriate. If it isn't please let me know and I can move it.

Personaly i would not. There are a lot of recovered / half dead / abandoned drives i can destroy in the name of practice that are being left at our shop. Good luck m8.

if the drive is really DEGAUSSED it is completely useless except for mechanical and electronics study : assuming it has been really DEGAUSSED , it no longer has servo recorded on media.
You can get "defective" drives for reasonable price (few $ / EUR).

I was thinking that maybe somebody with heavy RND wing can use em for study. But not enough clientel imo.

I agree it is a shame to see them crushed. We offer data destruction and sods law always means the next few days will see drives in and you've crushed the perfect donor

You may find a few people would buy them out of curiosity.

In terms of practice/research I don’t think they would work. If your ever testing a new tool/technique you want to eliminate all variables so if the process fails you know your method did not work. With these drives there is always that "Well it may be because it was degaussed" element that makes testing a pain.

There is a little potential but the price would have to be low.

Leigh

_________________
DataWreck Data Recovery Services
www.DataWreck.co.uk

I will admit to using Ebay as my source of economic data, but I've found it interesting that say, a used 500 gig drive will sell for $50. The same drive labeled as "broken/for parts" will still sell for somewhere around $25. I suspect that's because curious/enterprising/technically savvy/PII stealing people are willing to take a gamble on a drive that could potentially be brought back to life and maybe even have some goodies on it as a bonus.

So my thought was if you've never opened a drive like this, and don't want your first time to be on the only donor you were able to source, wouldn't you want to spend $5-$10 USD on a drive that was identical to the one you had to open so you knew what you were up against?

Maybe it's just me.

why get a 500G as start ? Get many smaller drives....

Most drives that go in for destruction will be older so people are unlikely to buy them to 'see what will be failing soon' if you like. If not degaussed that’s not a problem but rendering the drives useless gives little more than a way to test how degaussing affects drives.

I think you may get some minor interest from people using the drives for a few tests/a novelty item (Clock/Speaker etc) but very unlikely to sell large numbers to DR companies

Leigh

_________________
DataWreck Data Recovery Services
www.DataWreck.co.uk

I thought this too, however I saw several degaussed 750gb, 1 and 1.5 Tb drives. Which surprised me to be honest.

Yep your right we've had a few of those in a batch of 200 that came in this week and it is a total waste.

I think its the degaussing thats your main problem though. If they were totally wiped/zero'd/secure erased etc you would be fine and the data would be gone.

If you perhaps at least removed the PCB's first before totally destroying the drive at least you would have some selling potential for donor parts.

Leigh

_________________
DataWreck Data Recovery Services
www.DataWreck.co.uk

Yup what he said. PCB will contain no user info. See if the law will alow u to take em off.

Offering NON-DRIVE DESTRUCTIVE data destruction service

Yeah, but I would think one would at least need to have a station set up to at least power up the hard drives to make sure they came up and finished their POST cycle and didn't exhibit the Click o' Death prior to degaussing them. Don't know if it's really worth the added time to the data destruction company or if it would violate their confidentiality agreements.

Then you don't know how drives work....

P.S. of course it works better in big numbers... and no it's not degaussing. No POST and no problems AFTER.

BlackST: I have to admit, I think you lost me with that last post.