> What does Backblaze do with all its older hard drives? Resell? Recycle?
If the drive is still working (like you can read and write to it) when we cycle it out, we securely wipe it and then sometimes resell them in "bulk" to places like "Weird Stuff Warehouse" in the San Francisco area, or other places.
If the drive is not working, we physically destroy the hard drives (special equipment) and dispose/recycle the electronic waste of the carcass.
Is that as fun a day as I'm picturing?
When I worked for a defense contractor we started one of our daily infosec briefings with a video of one of our shipyards destroying a few hundred hard drives. They put them all in a shipyard size press brake. The end result was very long line of C shaped hard drives.
Anyone who deals with enough drives and doesn't have other business (like a shipyard) that they can borrow suitable equipment from will likely wind up buying an industrial shredder.[1]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shiRKLw5qVI
Hint: any hydraulic press would do, albeit a tad bit slower.