.

You could try going to town on them with the hammer, but that might still leave the platters intact.
 
Microwave would be a better bet.

Water isn't really going to do anything to the drives unless they were plugged in when you put them underwater or something. Water isn't really dangerous for electronics, it's only dangerous in the context that it conducts electricity, aka it's dangerous for electronics that are turned on or have an active power source.
 
Unscrew the top cover and smash the platters with a hammer. Just be aware, those things explode when they break.
 
They won't explode in the fire. The problem with that is you don't have visual confirmation that the platters are destroyed. That's why I like opening the drive. You just need to leave it in there long enough to destroy the platters. How long that is? I don't know.
 
You should line all of them up on the driveway, drive over them. Done.
 
The easier way is to open them, the platters are often made out of glass, and even if they're aluminum you can damage them easily once the cover is removed.
 
Find someone that has a magnet, preferably a very strong one.
 
Using a hand drill on drives is a major pain in the ass IMO unless it's a corded professional one.

Either drill press, gun, or just use software to wipe. Everything else is a pain in the ass unless you have an incredibly powerful magnet.
 
Your data can still be read even if you do all of the things in this thread so far. A sufficiently motivated person or organization with access to the right stuff can read the data off your platters without spinning them inside a disk drive. That's why hard disk shredders exist.

Either connect your disks to a PC and wipe them or open them and totally destroy all of the platters by breaking them into very small pieces. Drilling a few holes doesn't cut it.

Even if you wipe the disks in a PC, some of your data will probably still remain there in remapped sectors. Again, that's why disk shredders exist.
 
kristof, if he had data sensitive enough to be worrying about all of that, then he likely would not be asking about data destruction on a public forum.

FFS, the guy probably has porn and personal stuff on his HDDs, not Elvis Presley's current alias.

If someone wanted to go through all the trouble involved in getting your data off those drives (usually costing tens of thousands of dollars per drive, if not more), then why not just enter his house before they're destroyed and take them now? Common sense any?
 
Just throw them away. The recycler is not going to go to the trouble of extracting data off of your drives.

If you are paranoid, break the circuit board or bend the pins.
 
Why not just destroy the IDE connector? Who'e going to mess with it after that??? You can also just simply unscrew the top plate and throw it away just like that. The dirt and dust will do its part in destroying the drive should someone turn it on. Not sure if the platters would also oxidize if exposed to ambient air.
 
If you really want to destroy your data, thermite is the key. Just mix aluminium powder and iron(III)oxide in a 1:3 w/w ratio (1 kg should do the trick), place it in a flower pot on top of your HDD, put on your sunglasses and light it.

But maybe you're not so serious about destroying your data?
 
If you are dead set on the tub idea, maybe a suitable solution of salt water would be enough to corrode the electronics, platters, motors, chassis, etc. into an unusable state in a pretty short period of time. The platters might remain readable, but it would be extremely cost- and time-prohibitive to do so which would be enough to deter anyone up to maybe the NSA from accessing anything.
 
Any magnet you guys are thinking of are about 100 to 1000 times too weak to erase any data on drives. I have access to some degaussing machines and I'm told they cost about $220k each, and they run off 30 amp circuits and take 10 secs to charge the electo-magnets... so in other words it takes a hell of a magnetic field to wipe a drive. This is the NSA/DOD approved solution for destroying classified magnetic data.

Short of using a hard drive shredder or degausser, your best bet is to open the drives and smash the platters into nothing larger than 1/4" pieces or so. That should absolutely guarantee the data will never be read again.

The salt water is an interesting idea, I'm worried about the length of time it would take to actually see corrosion take effect.
 
Go rent a construction waste pick up magnet. It's strong enough to nix the data. I've tested it.
 
Play guitar/bass/PA speaker or know someone who does? Pro audio driver magnets will do the trick.
 
I shoot them as reactive targets. I'm several miles from the nearest neighbor though...
 
GotNoRice said:
Microwave would be a better bet.
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LOL!

Hopefully that was a joke.

If you want to see fireworks put some metal in a microwave.

Quit being so paranoid and put them in the trash after hitting them with a hammer.
 
Get a torx screwdriver set and remove the platters, that's the part you really want to destroy, rest does not matter. For good measure take a blow torch to the circuit board and burn up any "IC" chips to ensure you get the cache and any other parts that could potentially contain (small) data.

With the platters there's many things you can do such as taking sandpaper to it. If you can attach them to something that spins like a grinder you can also spin them against a sandpaper block. Before doing this you can also pass large magnet over the platers (such as the one found inside the drive itself!). I think that alone will probably do it, but physically disintegrating the platters is more guarantee. Get all sides of all platters. After that bend them as much as you can, and throw them out one at a time. Perhaps each garbage day throw out one platter. This will help ensure they are not together in the landfill, so even if everything you did to it somehow can be recovered, good luck finding what platter goes with what drive, and in what order. :p

IF you do anything that generates dust try to vacuum it up as you go and don't breathe it, I don't think any of it is really healthy. Data smoke, don't breathe this! :D Actually, get a blendtec.... done. lol
 
Anybody who handles platters directly for data recovery can probably recover data from a drive that's been submerged.

The platters are inside a metal case that shields them very well from microwaves.

Magnets have to be really powerful to erase platters, and even bulk tape erasers may not erase platters left inside the drive.

Running an erasing program will prevent anybody outside of the NSA from reading the data, and I mean running just a single pass to write zeros is enough -- no need for a multipass NSA-approved algorithm.

Causing any gross mechanical damage to the platters will also make them unreadable to virtually everybody -- drilling, bending, hammering, sanding or cutting.

FYI, the US government destroys drives by erasing them magnetically and them throwing them into a metal chipper (US Army at Ft. Huachuca, AZ).
 
Xinmosni said:
kristof, if he had data sensitive enough to be worrying about all of that, then he likely would not be asking about data destruction on a public forum.

FFS, the guy probably has porn and personal stuff on his HDDs, not Elvis Presley's current alias.

If someone wanted to go through all the trouble involved in getting your data off those drives (usually costing tens of thousands of dollars per drive, if not more), then why not just enter his house before they're destroyed and take them now? Common sense any?
Click to expand...

Its even more silly that every time someone makes a thread like this someone chimes in that despite all conventional methods , "someone" can piece it back together again. We know this is *possible* , extremely EXTREMELY hard but possible but...

Time for a reality check :

A. If you smash your platters to pieces (which is easy to do) unless the NSA comes firing through your door and collects each and every piece and dedicates time from their super computer network to actually begin to reconstruct data after their forensics team has had the time to piece it together into a state that they can get a "draft" image to start from where in some bits of data can be used to "guess" other bits then you are MORE than safe using NORMAL methods.


B. The odds of this happening to the average John Q Public's hard drive is about as likely as a shark serving you papers for dumping trash into the ocean over the last 100 years. The only way the Government would be willing to waste its money even attempting such a task would be only under completely dire circumstances and likely only if a terrorist act had been committed or was in the process of being perpetrated.


Bottom line? Smashing your platters thus turning them into thousands of little pieces is way beyond what the average individual needs to securely erase their private information. You , I and everyone on this forum will NEVER likely have a need where the physical destruction of a drive will be required. Simply erasing your drive multiple times will suffice.
 
B. The odds of this happening to the average John Q Public's hard drive is about as likely as a shark serving you papers for dumping trash into the ocean over the last 100 years.
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I hafta LOL when I see all this crazy/goofy shit.

Just unbelievable and a waste of time.

Anyone suggesting this kinda stuff has way too much time on their hands.:D
 
Godmachine said:
Its even more silly that every time someone makes a thread like this someone chimes in that despite all conventional methods , "someone" can piece it back together again. We know this is *possible* , extremely EXTREMELY hard but possible but...

Time for a reality check :

A. If you smash your platters to pieces (which is easy to do) unless the NSA comes firing through your door and collects each and every piece and dedicates time from their super computer network to actually begin to reconstruct data after their forensics team has had the time to piece it together into a state that they can get a "draft" image to start from where in some bits of data can be used to "guess" other bits then you are MORE than safe using NORMAL methods.


B. The odds of this happening to the average John Q Public's hard drive is about as likely as a shark serving you papers for dumping trash into the ocean over the last 100 years. The only way the Government would be willing to waste its money even attempting such a task would be only under completely dire circumstances and likely only if a terrorist act had been committed or was in the process of being perpetrated.


Bottom line? Smashing your platters thus turning them into thousands of little pieces is way beyond what the average individual needs to securely erase their private information. You , I and everyone on this forum will NEVER likely have a need where the physical destruction of a drive will be required. Simply erasing your drive multiple times will suffice.
Click to expand...

That's a bad attitude to have in a case like that though, rather than making assumptions that no one is going to go through the trouble (which is probably right) it's best to just be 100% safe. Last thing you need is it somehow getting into the hands of the NSA and they find an MP3 or movie you downloaded at some point and somehow trace it back to you via the serial number or something. Again, the odds are VERY low, but it's better to simply be certain it can't be recovered, than to live on assumptions.

Takes a few minutes to be extra sure, so it's well worth the piece of mind especially if it was a data storage drive and not just an OS drive. I have a pile of platters somewhere, when it gets big enough I'll probably find a bulk way of doing it. They've also been shuffled and scratched up and had magnets, finger prints and scratches put to them so as is I doubt even the NSA would have a good time.
 
Red Squirrel said:
That's a bad attitude to have in a case like that though, rather than making assumptions that no one is going to go through the trouble (which is probably right) it's best to just be 100% safe.
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Putting a hard drive in the recycling bin is 100% safe.

No one has ever had data recovered from a hard drive placed in such a bin except if they have prior knowledge that the drive has valuable data on it.

No one is going to believe that a hard drive dropped off for recycling by an individual has valuable data on it.

Damaging the power connectors is 200% safe (if that was possible). Because no one is going to spend time to fix the connectors on a drive on the chance that data is recoverable.
 
GeorgeHR said:
Putting a hard drive in the recycling bin is 100% safe.

No one has ever had data recovered from a hard drive placed in such a bin except if they have prior knowledge that the drive has valuable data on it.

No one is going to believe that a hard drive dropped off for recycling by an individual has valuable data on it.

Damaging the power connectors is 200% safe (if that was possible). Because no one is going to spend time to fix the connectors on a drive on the chance that data is recoverable.
Click to expand...

It's not a question of if it's going to happen but a question of if it's possible for it to happen. It's not 100% safe unless you prevent it from being possible to recover. Yes, the odds of it happening are extremely slim because nobody is really out to get you, but you still want to make sure you close that door anyway.
 
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