Whats amused you (in the news) today ?

Well, you're the expert...

LOL Capita wont be impressed that he's wearing a capita logo'd fleece in latest photos ( I assume he works for them )

they claim they have it down to 100,000 tons of material ( ie the material dumped 6 months either side of the date he dumped it )

the "investors" claim they can find the drive as it passes a scanner using AI,

I hope the judge says "if you took it to the tip, at the point at which the material was deposited it becomes council property." even if he does win and get permission to excavate an area

I've said  and will say it again
it's possible the drive was treated as scrap metal and has been melted
It's possible the drive was found by someone and reformatted and reused
It's likely if the drive is there it is damaged, I would suggest after multiple years buried it is very likely the disk itself is warped or even shattered

I would say the chances of it being recoverable are several thousand to 1
If I was an investor in this recovery plan I'd be looking at taking a very large chunk ( at least 80-90% ) of any return as it's me taking most of the risk

Now lets say that they don't find it, do they rescan ie process the material again, do they go back to court for permission to excavate a bigger area

Yes I did think it naïve of him offering just 10% to the council. The starting point should be 50% as they hold all the cards.

Not sure rust would be a problem as presumably there are people out there who know how to proof of concept HDDs etc and may well be able to extract the information if the incentive is there.

Re scrap metal we don't know how it was disposed. Presumably if dumped on its own into a wheelie bin there's every chance it would be landfilled. But in a PC case it would seem easier for someone to divert to recycling. We'd need to know a lot more about the council's processes at the time. Again, they hold all the cards.

Overall, it would be a good thing (albeit tiny) for the economy as finding it would have the effect of diverted funds from outside to Wales and the UK. If 50% was on the table I wonder if the council would be less resistant ?

Thank you for your "learned" analysis. We don't know if its a solid state disk or traditional but assuming the latter, it seems to me that the cobalt alloy platters would be well sealed inside the drive. Thus your graphic description of what it might encounter doesn't seem all that relevant.