Would you buy a landfill to look for a 12+ year old disk?

vaxvms

A guy wants to buy a landfill to go looking for a hard drive dumped there in 2013. What is this guy smoking?

If he were to uncover disk drives how would he know which is the right one? How long would it take to find any hard drive? Could the bits of a drive buried under mega tons of crap for more than 12 years be gotten?

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/11/bitcoin_drive_landfill/

HELLFIRE

vaxvms A guy wants to buy a landfill to go looking for a hard drive dumped there in 2013. What is this guy smoking?

To be fair, someone got the bright idea in 2014 to dig up a landfill where supposedly destroyed Atari 2600s and the ET cartridge were buried -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial

...Since the burial was first reported, there had been doubts as to its veracity and scope, and it was frequently dismissed as an urban legend. The event became a cultural icon and a reminder of the video game crash of 1983; it was the end result of a disastrous fiscal year which saw Atari, Inc. sold off by its parent company Warner Communications. Though it was believed that millions of copies of E.T. were buried, Atari officials later verified the numbers to be around 700,000 cartridges of various games, including E.T.

In 2014, Fuel Industries, Microsoft, and others worked with the New Mexico government to excavate the site as part of a documentary, Atari: Game Over. On April 26, 2014, the excavation revealed discarded games and hardware. Only a small fraction, about 1,300 cartridges, were recovered, with a portion given for curation and the rest auctioned to raise money for a museum to commemorate the burial. ...

Regards

Splitpair

vaxvms Could the bits of a drive buried under mega tons of crap for more than 12 years be gotten?

Maybe, but more than likely it would be destroyed, a HD could not survive being run over by a landfill compactor.

Back in my early 20's I worked a couple of years for Waste Management and operated one of those along with a Cat D7 and either one of those machines would wreck a HD in a single pass.

Kathy_9

I guess it would give him something to do. 😆🙃😆 But, that is a lot of money. . .

real_aurgathor

I didn't read the link you've posted but I'm guessing that the drive has a few (?!) bitcoins on it.

Hard drives are pretty rugged, and as long as they are not spinning, they can take quite a bit of abuse.
They are also reasonably well sealed, so unless it's submerged in water, chances are good that the innards are OK.
They are also made of metal, so he can use a ground penetrating radar to look for metal objects of a certain shape and size.

I think he has a fighting chance.

Rich221976

real_aurgathor

How many metal objects is he going to have to go thru in his lifetime though to find the hard drive?

I guess he can make a living by scraping all of the metal that is there.

real_aurgathor

Rich221976

Rich221976 How many metal objects is he going to have to go thru in his lifetime though to find the hard drive?

I guess he can make a living by scraping all of the metal that is there.

Never tried dumpster diving, much less on the scale that would be needed to retrieve a HDD from a dump, but assuming household garbage, I would expect a lot more cylindrical metal objects than objects that look like a HDD. And he supposedly know the approximate area it was dumped, and that should help to [pare it down.

The municipality who owns the site should just ask for a large amount of bond to ensure that everything gets restored at the end, and charge him a monthly fee for digging.

Splitpair

Rich221976 How many metal objects is he going to have to go thru in his lifetime though to find the hard drive?

Probably a million or so and being torn up could be very sharp.

vaxvms

Does he have the money to buy the landfill and hire the heavy equipment and crew to dig up and sift thru megatons of of sh*t? Surely he'd never get a loan or find someone to donate their time and equipment.

dave

People have invested actual money in equally large piles of garbage, though perhaps not as literally as in this case.

Guy54435

Even if they would allow him to buy the dump, I am pretty sure a Law , rule, provision of some type, if it is not already on the books, would be written stating that penetrating the cap is prohibited.

Splitpair

Guy54435 Even if they would allow him to buy the dump, I am pretty sure a Law , rule, provision of some type, if it is not already on the books, would be written to stating that penetrating the cap is prohibited.

Good point, the environmental permitting to disturb a fully compacted landfill would more than likely be impossible to obtain and if granted would require continuous environmental testing and a full restoration after being disturbed.

There is a site up in the NE where a company wanted to build a solar farm over a no longer in use landfill and after three years of trying to get the job permitted the permits where granted, however they where required to use ballasted racking because as required by the permits they could not drill a single hole in the ground.

broknsymetry

Hmm, literal bitcoin mining.

GrumpyCanadian

HELLFIRE Makes me wonder if anyone has (or will) try to dig up the landfill containing all of the Apple Lisa computers that never sold.

sempergoofy

He will likely not find the drive he seeks. But imagine the pr0n he will likely harvest as he goes through drives he does find.