What is the easiest way to.....

[ScriptOhio]

destroy a hard drive?

I cleaned out a closet and trashed my three old PCs. However, before doing so I took out the hard drives, because they had personnal information on them. Good thing that I did; since a couple hours after I put them on the curb for trash pickup someone came by and took them.

Now I have three hard drives that I want to trash. The Western Digital hard drives are pretty solid. Hitting them with a hammer barey dents them.What is the easiest way to make them unreadable?

thanks

 

[BUCKYLE]

Get a bigger hammer...or, swing like a man.

 

[scooter1369]

Hand it to a 4 year old. Dead in minutes.

 

[Taosman]

Hard drives are not easily destroyed. Sure, you can remove one easily enough. But, to totally destroy one does take some serious work with a hammer(bigger the better).
Pull the hard drive and store it.

 

[jwinslow]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRU7yEEgRaw]YouTube - Hard drive in microwave[/ame]

 

[Dryden]

Three sure-fire ways to wipe a drive:

1: If you want to save the drive, buy an eRazer.
PC Connection - Drive eRazer for 3.5" IDE PATA Hard Drives- Standard Model

2: If you want to physically trash the drive, take the cover off and expose the platter to ambient air. Once you contaminate the platters with dust/debris, the drive is unusable. At 5400RPM and higher, a little piece of dust will tear the drive up if someone attempts to put it back together and run it. Once disassembled, you have lots of options: such as whacking it with a bat, a hammer, or drilling holes through the platters.

3: Install XP, IE6 and no virus checker/spyware blocker and let my 7 year old son surf the Web.

 

[ScriptOhio]

Thanks for the suggestions, I just remembered that I purchased one of these about 12 years ago. Since it did cut into my home safe (after combination no longer worked), I'm pretty certain that it will cut into a hard drive too. See Plan B:

 

[BUCKYLE]

Thanks for the suggestions, I just remembered that I purchased one of these about 12 years ago. Since it did cut into my home safe (after combination no longer worked) , I'm pretty certain that it will cut into a hard drive too. See Plan B:

Yeah, I'd say that'd do it. You could saw-cut concrete with one of those fuckers.

 

[MD Buckeye]

This might get it done.....

 

[ScriptOhio]

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Surprisingly enough the grinder worked. I'm sure that the tank would have worked too (if I had one).

 

[Hodge]

FWIW, next time it might be easier to use DBAN: Darik's Boot and Nuke (Hard Drive Disk Wipe)

It'll wipe anything on your drive, it supports 5 different options for deletion (the 5 vary in level of security, and length of time it will take to wipe).

However, I imagine you had much more fun the way you did it.

 

[utgrad73]

Won't as very powerful magnet take care of the data left on an old HD? I saw it in a movie once, it must be true.

 

[Taosman]

Won't as very powerful magnet take care of the data left on an old HD? I saw it in a movie once, it must be true.

In theory...yes. But, how will you know the effectiveness? :tongue2:

It is pretty amazing how hard it actually is to physically destroy one.

 

[Muck]

Won't as very powerful magnet take care of the data left on an old HD? I saw it in a movie once, it must be true.

Depending on how new the drive is you will need a magnetic field of upwards of 5300 Oe (Oersted).

NSA/DoD approved degaussing machines are available. They go for about $10K & up.

 

[TheMightyQuinn]

Won't as very powerful magnet take care of the data left on an old HD? I saw it in a movie once, it must be true.

Since its a part of H.I.P.P.A regulations as part of proper disposel, I'd say it works. We have a big degausser at work, and thats what we use it for.