In a world where sustainability is top of mind, the question arises: “What happens to computer electronics devices when their lifecycle is done?”
HDDs are no exception.
HDDs are—and will continue to be—the foundational storage medium for hyperscale cloud data centers. IDC projects1 that global data generation will increase from 132.4 zettabytes (ZB) in 2023 to 393.9ZB in 2028, almost tripling, and HDDs will continue to account for nearly 80% of the storage capacity used in hyperscale and cloud data centers through 20282. HDDs are not just here to stay—they’re essential for enabling the next wave of innovation.
When an HDD reaches its end of life, how can its components be used for the greater good?
Rhownica Birch, who is director of Global Operations Product Sustainability on my team, asked just that question. As part of her quest to identify how recycled content is used in the company’s products and packaging, she decided to take it one step further and examine what happens to HDDs once they reach the end of their lifecycle.
It was from this exercise that she, our team, and partners created the Advanced Recycling and Rare Earth Material Capture Program, an ambitious effort in the U.S. to capture rare earths from destroyed, shredded hard drives at scale.
An opportunity to make a significant impact
An HDD is a modern marvel. HDD innovation blends many facets of material and mechanical sciences, and the HDD itself is composed of hundreds of components, with materials ranging from aluminum to steel to rare earth materials such as neodymium, dysprosium, and praseodymium.
Aluminum and steel are key components that house, protect, and compose a hard drive’s internal elements, such as its platters, spindle motor, actuator, and other structural parts.
Rare earth elements are critical to the magnetic capabilities of HDDs. Neodymium magnets, for example, allow HDDs to read and write data. These and other rare earth elements contribute to an HDD’s high performance and durability.
When a data center is ready to retire a generation of its HDDs, many of them are destroyed for security reasons. Rare earths are often melted down with steel because many recovery processes involve a highly corrosive process that is not eco-friendly nor economical—and the rare earths are lost. Our department sought a different approach in the quest to increase the recyclability of HDDs and their valuable materials.
Sustainability is a team sport
Western Digital’s Office of the CTO had insight into a new recycling process through their associations with the National Science Foundation and the Critical Materials Innovation Hub at Ames National Laboratory. It was there that they learned of Critical Materials Recycling’s (CMR’s) acid-free dissolution recycling (ADR) technology, which was invented over eight years ago.
Birch, along with Dr. Inez Hua, Engineering Advisor for Environmental Sustainability, and Qing Dai, Distinguished Engineer at Western Digital, enlisted CMR for a controlled study to evaluate the rare earth reclaiming process and its output. Once the initial pilot program achieved reclaim percentages of over 90%, Microsoft and its recycler, PedalPoint Recycling, were enlisted to participate in a subsequent large-scale pilot program in 2024 along with CMR and Western Digital.
“HDDs are vital to our data center infrastructure, and advancing a circular supply chain is a core focus for Microsoft,” said Chuck Graham, Microsoft CVP, Cloud Sourcing, Supply Chain, Sustainability, and Security in a press release.
The hard drives were collected from several Microsoft data centers in the United States and sent to the recycling partners. Shreds of HDDs, SSDs, and caddies were sent to PedalPoint where they were sorted and processed. The magnets and steel were then sent to CMR to figure out the best way to sort and size the materials and extract the valuable rare earth elements using CMR’s environmentally friendly and economically competitive ADR recycling process.
The four companies went through multiple pilots and invested in both new equipment and innovations to create a mass production ecosystem at scale for retrieval of rare earths, which was completed in December 2024. Together the companies have transformed close to 50,000 pounds of end-of-life drives, mounting caddies, and other materials into critical, high-value materials, all while significantly reducing environmental impact.
This multi-party at-scale recovery has demonstrated that an ecosystem of socially and environmentally responsible EOL management is possible through a combination of careful segregation, technologically enabled chemical processes, and sustainable resources that result in ~90% high-yield elemental and rare earth recovery and ~80% capture rate of all shredded material. On top of that, the carbon footprint shows 95% less carbon than virgin mining.
Driving change and fueling new ecosystems with an eco-friendly handprint
What’s even more exciting is the potential for this program to benefit other industries.
The technology, process, and ecosystem help Western Digital’s data center customers as well as supply chains in unrelated industries. After the elements are recovered, they can be fed back into the U.S. market for rare earths and other materials.
As Daniel Bina, CEO of CMR, put it, “The advancements and success achieved with rare earth recovery from HDDs can be directly applied to rare earth recovery from electric vehicles (EVs) and wind turbines.”
“We became the model for the ecosystem with our carbon handprint; it’s something we created but can translate outside of our industry,” said Birch. “This process is expected to mature over time toward the north star of closed-loop circularity.”
Western Digital’s goal is to encourage more of its cloud customers and partners to engage in this advanced recycling ecosystem to help develop and work toward a closed-loop system.
This initiative is setting a new standard for end-of-life data storage management. The project isn’t just a milestone; it’s a blueprint for large-scale, domestic recycling of essential metals and materials that will drive sustainable progress for years to come.
At Western Digital we see technology breakthroughs every day. We make them happen. What inspires me as a leader in sustainability is a project that makes a big impact in terms of sustainability value. These projects are challenging, and most haven’t been done before, so it’s hard work. It takes collaboration and passion to connect equally passionate partners. The Advanced Recycling and Rare Earth Material Capture Program is such a project, and I am proud of my team and our colleagues, and what we have accomplished together.
1 IDC Global Datasphere Forecast, 2024-2028, AI Everywhere, But Upsurge in Data Will Take Time, May 2024, US5207642
2 Worldwide Global StorageSphere Forecast, 2024-2028: Al Everywhere, But Storage Capacity Remains a Balancing Act, June 9, 2024, US52312824
