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This thread is 4 days old now, and if the OP had just started a ATA secure erase cycle on the drive (which handles relocated sectors), I'm sure he'd be done by now and 100% safe from ever recovering a single useful byte of information (a few random bits, maybe though). It might take more time than physical destruction, but it would be less work (plug, click, forget).


westrock2000 said:
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.
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Hard drives aren't sealed devices. They rely on air for their heads' operation the way an aircraft wing use air for lift. (Although, WD is supposed to be putting out some helium filled drives for the enterprise market).
 
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If you MUST physically damage the drive, snap the circuit board/controller and drill a hole through the drive. Done.

Otherwise... Single pass zero out with DBAN. The multipass bullshit is all unsubstantiated. No need to overcomplicate it.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Wonder if that is going to make all the music on it sound funny. :D
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Will it be like filling your tires with nitrogen? :D

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
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Do you have a survival bunker too? LOL!
 
I'm sorry, I agree with some other posters. Unless you have kiddie porn or something on your hard drive (or are a terrorist), I can't imagine anyone other than the NSA caring enough to try to resurrect drives with some of the damage we are talking about.
 
Screw all of these pansy suggestions. Nuclear blast or Godzilla's breath. One of those should do it.
 
danswartz said:
I'm sorry, I agree with some other posters. Unless you have kiddie porn or something on your hard drive (or are a terrorist), I can't imagine anyone other than the NSA caring enough to try to resurrect drives with some of the damage we are talking about.
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Even if you do have KP or illegal documents on your HDD, unless you are producing or selling the stuff it is extremely unlikely anyone will spend the extreme amount of money involved in recovering that data. They'd sooner just either 1) catch you in the act via entrapment like they do for prostitution stings, or 2) subpeona logs from your ISP. Both solutions are much less costly or difficult than recovering data from a damaged HDD.
 
Blend-o-matic!

Once the entire drive is reduced to a fine powder, no one will take the time to reassemble it.
 
Xinmosni said:
Even if you do have KP or illegal documents on your HDD, unless you are producing or selling the stuff it is extremely unlikely anyone will spend the extreme amount of money involved in recovering that data. They'd sooner just either 1) catch you in the act via entrapment like they do for prostitution stings, or 2) subpeona logs from your ISP. Both solutions are much less costly or difficult than recovering data from a damaged HDD.
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Yeah, agreed. I was bending over the other way to point out how paranoid (and silly) this all is.
 
ryan_975 said:
Hard drives aren't sealed devices. They rely on air for their heads' operation the way an aircraft wing use air for lift. (Although, WD is supposed to be putting out some helium filled drives for the enterprise market).
Click to expand...

Air coming in through the breather hole versus sitting in the trash with exposed heads are different scenarios.
 
kristof said:
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.
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What about taking out the platters and hitting them with a sander.
 
you could always scrap the drives for any valuable metals

otherwise taking the sledgehammer to a drive is good exercise :)
 
I thought about trying a sledgehammer once, but they're so resistant to dents that I think I'd end up hurting myself before the platters.

Maybe a jackhammer? :D
 
Xinmosni said:
I thought about trying a sledgehammer once, but they're so resistant to dents that I think I'd end up hurting myself before the platters.

Maybe a jackhammer? :D
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Less than 3 well placed hits will shatter the platters.

I know. Because a drive I did this to made the front page of HardOCP. ;)
 
How big of a sledge? I have one, but I think it's like... 20lbs at the most? Forget how they're measured.
 
all I do is take a screwdriver and hammer it through the cover and platters, soon as the screw driver hits those platters they become many 1000's of pieces

gun would be more fun but frowned upon in the office
 
I've only had laptop drives actually shatter, pretty sure 3.5" drives are some kind of aluminium. I've bended platters like a taco and they don't shatter.

For a quick secure erase I usually just take the cover off, turn it on, and slowly pass a screw driver along the top platter. I eventually remove all the platters and scratch them all then throw them in a pile somewhere. Eventually I want to do something more fun with them like termite but may as well wait till I have a decent accumulation. As they stand now I highly doubt even the NSA would be able to recover much as with one platter completely destroyed it's kinda like a drive in a raid 0 failing.
 
Red Squirrel said:
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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I am at Disney World. Yesterday when we came back to our room there were 3 suitcases in the room. Misdelivered by by the Magical Express.

It seems reasonable to suggest that when traveling with hard drives one should destroy them on the off chance that they will be misdelivered and someone will steal the data.

It also seems reasonable that the offsite backup services are just as unsafe. So after you upload your data to them, pay a visit and destroy the hard drives.

Your concept of 100% safe is flawed.
 
Go buy a 25$ drill from home depo with decent bits. Problem solved.

Those saying put it in your microwave.. hope you have amazing renters or home oweners insurance.
 
GeorgeHR said:
I am at Disney World. Yesterday when we came back to our room there were 3 suitcases in the room. Misdelivered by by the Magical Express.

It seems reasonable to suggest that when traveling with hard drives one should destroy them on the off chance that they will be misdelivered and someone will steal the data.

It also seems reasonable that the offsite backup services are just as unsafe. So after you upload your data to them, pay a visit and destroy the hard drives.

Your concept of 100% safe is flawed.
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It's called encryption, which allows you to USE the drive without worry of having to destroy it on the off-chance it may be misplaced/stolen. SMH...
 
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Old Hippie said:
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
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It's doable. It's not easy, it's not cheap. Unless you are creating nuclear devices for N. Korea, you have nothing to worry about. You're not the droids they are looking for.

The drill works fine. I use DBAN. If it is from some place with HIPAA requirements, I do DBAN and either take it to a shredder that can do it or drill holes in it and take it apart and throw things away in different trash cans. If it's not my data and it's sensitive, I do go overboard a little. Even if I did the minimum and just drilled it, no one would recover it, but I like the extra peace of mind with that .0000000000001% chance of recovery.

Microwave? Really? If someone does that, please post a video. :D
 
GeorgeHR said:
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.
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Bad idea.
Replacement PCB's are freely available, all data is still intact.

Final thought:
DBAN
or
Wide drill-bit
or
Rip the drive open with a Torx and destroy the platters with gouges and/or sandpaper.

Microwave is a silly idea, unless you hate your kitchen appliances.

End of line.
 
GeorgeHR said:
I am at Disney World. Yesterday when we came back to our room there were 3 suitcases in the room. Misdelivered by by the Magical Express.

It seems reasonable to suggest that when traveling with hard drives one should destroy them on the off chance that they will be misdelivered and someone will steal the data.

It also seems reasonable that the offsite backup services are just as unsafe. So after you upload your data to them, pay a visit and destroy the hard drives.

Your concept of 100% safe is flawed.
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I have no idea WTF you're on about. We're talking about what you do with a hard drive when you want to dispose of it. Yes there is always the risk of someone getting your data such as if you misplace a hard drive or get it stolen, but that's not the point of this, and you can always encrypt it.

And who brings their hard drives to Disney world? lol. Want to test how many G's of force they can handle on a roller-coaster? :D
 
Ur_Mom said:
It's doable. It's not easy, it's not cheap. Unless you are creating nuclear devices for N. Korea, you have nothing to worry about. You're not the droids they are looking for.

The drill works fine. I use DBAN. If it is from some place with HIPAA requirements, I do DBAN and either take it to a shredder that can do it or drill holes in it and take it apart and throw things away in different trash cans. If it's not my data and it's sensitive, I do go overboard a little. Even if I did the minimum and just drilled it, no one would recover it, but I like the extra peace of mind with that .0000000000001% chance of recovery.

Microwave? Really? If someone does that, please post a video. :D
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bUyp00RvTw :D

Too bad they stopped making those videos. :(
 
Shoot them with a gun that's powerful enough to pass through at least the top cover and the platters.

If you have no gun and no place to shoot, then DBAN works pretty damn well, although not as fun.
 
No, drill a hole through it a few times (some agencies can fill in the missing hole with a compound and retrieve the rest), or tear open the casing, and hammer the crap out of the platters.
 
David-Duc said:
HDD platters never explode. Physically impossible.
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Yeah not sure what is with this exploding business. I've dented drive platters like a taco. Some of the surface sometimes chips off but that's about it.

Laptop drives on the other hand, the platters are often made of glass, or at least they were at some point, not sure if they still are now.
 
David-Duc said:
HDD platters never explode. Physically impossible.
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My Deskstar drive disagrees with you.

ekJ7r0R.jpg
 
Red Squirrel said:
Yeah not sure what is with this exploding business. I've dented drive platters like a taco. Some of the surface sometimes chips off but that's about it.

Laptop drives on the other hand, the platters are often made of glass, or at least they were at some point, not sure if they still are now.
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There were a few years that desktop and enterprise drives were made with glass platters instead of aluminum. Glass platters don't expand as much when they warm up, so they could run at higher (e.g 5400) rpms before modern cooler running spindle motors came about.
 
David-Duc said:
The glass platter is shattered, imagine when you break a glass, it will be shattered like that. That's not an explosion.:confused:
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ex·plo·sion
/ikˈsplōZHən/

Noun
1.A violent and destructive shattering or blowing apart of something, as is caused by a bomb.
2.A violent expansion in which energy is transmitted outward as a shock wave.
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hmm...
 
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