Western Digital, Microsoft Target Rare Earth Metals Through Hard Drive Recycling

Western Digital says it's created an initiative to retrieve rare earth metals from hard drives that are being cycled out of data centers. The tech company, best known for its digital storage products, says its Advanced Recycling and Rare Earth Material Capture Program has partnered with Microsoft and two other companies to reclaim rare earth metals including neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium. Rare earth elements have taken on new significance amid the trade battles between the US and China. In response to President Donald Trump's imposition of soaring tariffs on products imported from China, Beijing said last week that it has suspended exports of rare earth minerals to the US. Those minerals are critical to the manufacturing of many high-tech products and are found in products like computers, cars and military hardware. The hard drives in data center servers are often destroyed for security reasons when systems are upgraded, Jackie Jung, Western Digital's vice president of glob ... Read full article.