Dumpster Diving is so much fun!

[amdkt7]

Ok, it's not a dumpster, but almost the same thing and anything in it is fair game as it is going to reclaim where stuff is sold for scrap prices.

Well anyway some times I find a harddrive in there, I've gotten some good ones, two or three I think.

Yesterday I found about 50 hard drives in there, not including a whole box of scii drives (not great drives). Most apeared to be used, some maked bad. I don't know where they came from, but they are used in product that we repair. These are 2.1 to 20 gig drives. Most are 6.4 or ten gig maxtors.

So far I have found 3 good 10 gig drives. I'm using Maxtor's Powermax software to low level format, then factory certify, then I partition and format.

I'll use them to repair computers and store software and backups. If I get a good yield out of them I'll give the IT people a few.

The SCII drives, if they are any good I will give them to the shop floor to repair product. They were shipped from segate to us, but were not boxed properly. Maybe they were considered non repairable.

I'm having fun sorting through them...

The 20 gig drives have all been bad so far, Oh well.....

Nothing like finding good, useable junk. Now if someone would just throw away a working XP chip. Wait, that would require that my company had something faster than a PIII 800 in the building... Hmmm. Maybe they'll toss out a laptop. At least that would stop them from accusing me of theft for the one that's missing.

-Whir

[Richard Cranium]

amdkt7, if any of the drives are Maxtor, check their site for a utility to check the HD's

I've gotten a couple of Maxtors to come back to life when a fdisk failed !

awsome deal amdkt7!

[amdkt7]

Yes, I'm using powermax from maxtor to check and repair the disks.

So far I have 4 10 gig drives and 2 6.4 gig tested ok.

Altogether I have about 26-28 drives, so far about 11 have been found to be bad. I may be able to swap circuit boards and repair some, but most seem to be bad disks and not controllers, hell they were dropped in to the container, many have physical damage, dents and dings.

[Brainchild]

11 out of 26 bad, that's less than 50%

[amdkt7]

I think its a very good yield for drives that are supposed to be bad!

I got a few more to check out, I'm on the last 6.4, next I have four 10 gig drives that have been "clipped" to a smaller size. I will have to unclip them, using a piece of software that flashes the drive with the original paramaters. It's sometimes a little tricky to figure out the correct lba number for the drive, but so far I have rescued a few other clipped drives. We have to replace drives in product with bigger drives than what was originally installed at the factory, so we clip them down to the original drive size.

[Ritalin Kid]

Hey amdkt7 where exactly are you dumpster diving in Nashville? I'll come join you!!!

[SickPup404]

Where do you go??? I want to start checking around here!!! Any suggestions?

[zgf2022]

im lucky i get to pre dumpster-dumpster dive
gotta love working in the IT department with a boss who doesnt mind the old stuff going missing (because he wants new stuff and we cant order it unless the old stuff is gone ) but when i say old i mean 500mb - 800mb old. 6gb is a premium drive around here! (school district)