Magnetic hard drives store so much personal information in this day and age. So how do you get rid of them securely when your computer’s time is up? According to Tim McIntyre, program manager at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Electrical and Electronics Systems Research Division, 115 million hard drives will reach the end of their use in 2016 alone. Why not put them to good use? Especially when that use does wonders for the world of magnets. Rare-earth elements such as neodymium are used to make some of the world’s most powerful magnets. Neodymium magnets are essential components of everyday items ranging from hybrid cars to computer hard drives. While the element is used in what we think of as common objects, neodymium isn’t all that common to find. In fact, most of the world’s neodymium is produced outside of the United States. That’s where recycling comes in. Because so many technological products are made with neodymium magnets, recycling old electronics can yield neodymium from their magnets that can be repurposed into something new. The Cost of Recycling Magnets Though recycling neodymium magnets from existing products eliminates potentially pricey production costs involved with creating the material from scratch, such as mining for the raw materials, recycling the rare-earth material still incurs a cost. Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working on a way to make the recovery of rare-earth magnets more economically feasible. The hard drives are collected on a conveyer, scanned, and entered into a database to determine the model of each type for appropriate processing. The hard drive is then disassembled to recover and recycle the necessary parts. Current tests rely on ultra-high-speed fastener removal and punching to “recover the magnets, their permalloy brackets, circuit boards, aluminum and steel, and also destroys data storage media to ensure security.” Magnets recovered in this way are left intact and can be recycled directly or reprocessed back into raw form. Removing the cost barrier from this process could impact  the field of recycling magnetic materials in a major way. What could you do with more magnets?