Global Initiative Mines Retired Hard Disk Drives for Materials and Magnets

Late very last year, Google gained 6 difficult disk drives from Seagate: model new, save for their scarce-earth magnets. The magnets had currently spent one particular lifetime in Google’s info centers and were being headed for a 2nd one particular.

The evidence-of-concept experiment is one particular of 5 initiatives less than a international initiative to take a look at the feasibility of recovering and reusing substance from retired hard disk drives (HDDs). The system by itself is a very long-term energy structured by the International Electronics Producing Initiative (iNEMI), with venture team members from the U.S. Office of Energy’s Crucial Elements Institute. The success from all 5 initiatives will be summarized in a forthcoming report. 

So considerably, early success are encouraging. “You can harvest [the magnets], you can do it cleanly, you can place it again collectively and the drives will function,” says Mark Schaffer, a guide performing with iNEMI.