SSD (SSD)

SSD stands for solid state drive, a computer storage device that records data as electrical charge trapped in floating-gate transistors on NAND flash memory chips, with no moving parts. SSDs now dominate new laptop, desktop, and enterprise server sales in India and are progressively displacing HDDs in the e-waste stream.

Composition and value drivers: A standard 2.5-inch SATA SSD weighs 40-60 grams; an M.2 NVMe SSD weighs only 6-10 grams. The bill of materials is dominated by NAND flash chips (60-70% of internal mass) and a controller IC, mounted on a fibreglass-resin PCB with gold-plated edge connectors. Because there is no spinning platter, motor, or actuator, SSDs contain essentially no recoverable bulk metal — no aluminium chassis, no steel cover, no neodymium magnet. The economic value at end-of-life is concentrated entirely in the PCB precious-metal content: gold bonding wires inside the flash dies, gold-plated edge contacts, palladium in the multilayer ceramic capacitors, and silver in the solder.

Estimated PCB precious-metal yield: Modern enterprise SSD PCBs yield roughly 150-250 grams of gold per tonne of PCB scrap and 800-1,200 grams of silver per tonne — markedly richer than smartphone main PCBs because the flash dies pack a high density of gold wire bonds. Recovery follows the standard hydrometallurgical route: shred, sieve, leach with aqua regia or chloride chemistry, then precipitate and refine. A 1 TPH PCB recovery line processing mixed SSDs and motherboards can return Rs 3,500-6,000 per kg of clean PCB scrap depending on metal prices.

Data destruction is non-negotiable: Critically, degaussing has zero effect on SSDs because data is stored as electrical charge, not magnetism. NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 specifies cryptographic erase (overwriting the encryption key) as the preferred method for self-encrypting drives, with physical shredding to particles 2 mm or smaller as the fallback. Indian recyclers serving banking, healthcare (HIPAA), or European clients (GDPR) must own an SSD-grade shredder, not merely an HDD degausser. Failure mode: routing SSDs through an HDD degausser produces an authentic-looking but completely fraudulent destruction certificate.