Hard Drive Sorting

Hard drive sorting is done in System Evaluation. There should already be a tub for keepers and a bucket for recyclers.

Sort

There should be a bucket filled with drives to be tossed and a tub filled with drives to be kept. These need to be checked for mistakes. (If the tub or bucket is not there, use your best judgment to figure out which is which and go from there.)

List of drives to recycle

• 3 1/2 inch IDE hard drives marked less than 30 GB
• 2 1/2 inch IDE hard drives marked less than 10 GB
• 5 1/4 inch IDE hard drives, regardless of capacity (these are known as "Bigfoot" drives)
• SCSI drives marked less than 36 GB
• 50 pin SCSI drives
• MFM hard drives (very old, see example)

List of drives to keep

• 3 1/2 inch IDE hard drives marked 20 GB or bigger
• SCSI drives marked 36 GB or bigger
• 2 1/2 inch IDE hard drives marked 10 GB or bigger

When in doubt keep the drive.

Steps when Sorting

1. First, check the green & yellow bucket for Drives that should be kept:
   • check the drives for hammer marks - if there are none check to see if they are over 20GB
   • remove any rails that may still be present if the drive was brought back from Receiving

1. • put keepers in the TARDIS
2. Next, remove the Drives from the red bin and place them by the squisher.
3. Ask someone in charge to check them before destroying the "not keep drives" (even if you think you know how), and ask about the ones you think you want to keep.
4. Squish the drives as directed
5. Put all the recyclers in the bucket and all the keepers in TARDIS.

How to tell a hard drive's capacity

Many hard drives are marked with their capacity. The words might be very small, but they're usually there. Look carefully for them. If that doesn't work:

Look for double labeled drives

Some drives have two labels. One generic label lists several different capacities and/or disk geometry. The other label is model specific and lists the model number. For instance one label might say:

MPC3032AT (3.24GB)
MPC3043AT (4.32GB)
MPC3064AT (6.48GB)
MPC3084AT (8.45GB)
MPC3096AT (9.74GB)

The other label says:

Model MPC3032AT

The drive is a 3.24 GB drive

Look for model number schemes

Some model numbers contain a hint as to the capacity of the drive. For instance, the western digital drives can usually be deduced by dropping the first digit in the model number. In the example above MPC3032AT is approximately a 3.2 GB drive and MPC3043AT is approximately a 4.3. Thus we can determine that the third and fourth digit in the four digit number is the drive size. By comparing similar models, you might be able to determine the probable sizes.

Google is your friend.

Try googling the model number and see if anything turns up.

Where to put them

• Hard drives in the Recycle bucket go straight to Recycling after they are signed off by the Eval instructor and suitably whacked, drilled or squished.
• Good Hard Drives go into the TARDIS

Hard Drive Sorting Flowchart