To transform 4000 data centers, the United States will extract rare earths from used hard disks (7)

3. Is hard disk recycling feasible

Stakeholders published a report that identified a series of potential strategies, including erasing and reusing entire the hard drive, removing and reusing magnet components, grinding old hard drive magnets, manufacturing new magnets from the ground powder, and extracting and purifying rare earth elements from shredded drives. However, these strategies all have a common challenge—disassembling the magnet components manually is labor intensive, while extracting the rare earths by using chemical techniques can be chemical or energy intensive. The former has poor performance and the latter is contrary to the strategy.

Nevertheless, some companies have begun to take the first step. In 2018, Google conducted a small demonstration project with hard drive manufacturer Seagate and electronic refurbishment company Recontext (formerly called Teletplan), which involved removing permanent magnet components from 6 hard drives and placing them in a new Seagate drive.

It was also the demonstration that directly drove technology giants' research on hard disk recycling technology after 2019. The research published in Journal Resources, Conservation, and Recycling shows that not only the permanent magnets in hard disks can be obtained and reused on a large scale, but also there are significant benefits to the environment. The carbon emissions of the reused magnet assembly are 86% lower than the new ones.