- Chemical-free recycling supports US supply chains and cuts landfill waste
- Recovered materials support electric cars, wind power and advanced electronics production
- Sustainable Life Plan Reduces the Future of Storage in US Data Centers
A new pilot program from Microsoft and Western Digital has shown a new method of recycling rare earth elements (REEs) from shut down hard drive drives.
The initiative, developed in collaboration with Critical Materials Recycling (CMR) and Pedalpoint recycling, successfully recovered almost 90% of rare earth oxides and about 80% of the total ingredient from life’s drive and related components.
Using materials obtained from Microsoft’s US-based data centers, the project processed approx. 50,000 pounds of shredded HDDs and mounting that converted them to elementary materials with high purity. These can now be reused across key sectors such as electric vehicles, wind energy and advanced computing.
Old HDDs now have more value
The project uses an acid -free, environmentally friendly recycling process that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 95% compared to conventional mining and refining.
This procedure not only recovers rare earths such as neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium, which are important for HDD magnetic systems, but also extract valuable metals including copper, aluminum, steel and gold that feed them back into the American supply chain. It shows that even external hard drives can have an environmentally friendly other life.
Despite the critical role of rare earths in cloud infrastructure, the current domestic recycling effort in the United States regains less than 10% of these materials.
Meanwhile, over 85% of global Ree production remains concentrated abroad, but this pilot aims to change it by offering a scalable, domestic solution that reduces landfill waste, improves the supply chain’s resilience and lowers the dependence on foreign sources.
“This is a huge effort from all parties involved. This pilot program has shown that sustainable and economically viable life life (EOL) management for HDDs is achievable,” said Chuck Graham, Corporate VP for cloud sourcing, supply chain, sustainability and security at Microsoft.
Acid-free resolution recycling (ADR), a technology developed by Critical Material’s Innovation (CMI) Hub, was central to this performance.
“This project is important because the HDD raw material continues to grow globally as AI continues to drive the demand for HDD data storage,” said Tom Lograsso, director of CMI.
Via Storagenewsletter
