Destroying a computer hard drive

Sac Arrow said:
Yep. I'm not worried about the NSA. I'm worried about Yuri in the Balkans.
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don’t be worried. Yuri probably already has all that data. So does the NSA.

If you want to be really sure, maybe the tiny torx to take it apart, then a drop or two of gallium on each platter head, which are usually made of aluminum. In a few hours, the pieces will be brittle and shatter.
 
You could give it to the blend-tec guy -


Will it blend? That is the question.
 
yeah, blow it up! throw that cold pot roast and hard drive in the broken crockpot and blow it all up! :happydance:
 
Half Fast said:
Just take it to a daycare and hand it over to a group of 3-year-olds. It will be destroyed in no time
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Or give it to my 12 year old. She will lose it within 10 minutes. She will lose it so hard it will never be seen again by anyone. Like it was lost into a black hole. Lost to the same spot as her iPhone, expensive earbuds, countless shoes (somehow??), other expensive items. Yep. This is the answer. Give it to my kid and you will never ever ever see it again.
 
a 12 ton
0x720@165657341809facf85c3.jpeg
press makes quick work of it.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
That's not politically correct.....the municipal landfill must do that. o_O
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So when I rebuild my back porch, I am not allowed to bury a skeleton underneath it.??

And yes, I do plan on burying a halloween skeleton decoration under the porch. I got the idea from a friend of mine that was planting a row of hedges next to the fence around his backyard and uncovered 2 skeletons wrapped in heavy duty canvas tarps that had been buried there....
 
Sac Arrow said:
View attachment 108301

Okay I need to destroy a hard drive that I don't want bad guys to get banking information off of. For the life of me, I can't find a tool that will undo the screws on it.

But, there is a seal, when penetrated, allows access inside, and I -think- I scraped the disc up pretty good with a screwdriver. For good measure I gave it a bunch of whacks to the top of the case with a hammer.

Good enough? I don't feel like spending the time to drill in to it, or to place a shaped charge over it.
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You are not hitting it hard. A couple of big whacks with a sledge hammer will shatter the disc inside.
 
Save the only copy of your wedding pictures to the drive. That will ensure that it fails beyond any hope of data recovery.
 
wanttaja said:
Torx screws. They're under the label. Peel the label off, there should be 4 to 6 under it.

I disassemble the drive, remove each platter, clamp one side in a vise and bend the free side to 90 degrees. Doubt any could read it. Sometimes the platters are plastic and shatter.

Ron Wanttaja
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Those "plastic" platters are glass or ceramic!
 
Kenny Phillips said:
Those "plastic" platters are glass or ceramic!
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For plastic or ceramic, they bend pretty good. I bend mine 90 degrees.

Now, I admit most of my hard disks are pretty old and mostly WD. I'm sure there are newer ones that aren't metal.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Deelee said:
You could give it to the blend-tec guy -


Will it blend? That is the question.
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Hmmm. I have a Blendtec and an old non-functional Ipad1.
I wonder . . .
 
There is a freeware that will overwrite the data with 0s. Last time I had to send a warranty hard drive in I overwrote it I think 10 times. The recommendation I believe is 3 times to make sure you got every byte.
 
Skip Miller said:
The air seal is broken in post #1. Just fill it with salt water.

-Skip
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Some dry salt and plugging it in would probably do the trick. Hammer is quicker and more certain. Two swings at most.
 
Drill baby drill ‍

DDF3DA53-EEC0-4675-9D29-FE94D2CF2B8F.jpeg
 
Last time i destroyed one I went at it with an 8 pound sledge hammer. It was kinda fun!
 
If the platters are aluminum, lye based drain cleaner will work way better than salt water. "Dissolving" isn't on NIST's acceptable list, but it'll work.
 
I realize that this thread is about destroying a computer hard drive; however, I believe the underlying concern is the release of confidential personal data to undesirable recipients. Old hard drives retain data via non-volatile memory, and, in my opinion, the only way those data can be reliably removed (or made inaccessible) is to destroy the hard drives; however, don't forget that most modern printers also retain data via their own non-volatile memories. There might also be other peripheral devices that store your data separate from the CPU hard drive.
 
Capngrog said:
I realize that this thread is about destroying a computer hard drive; however, I believe the underlying concern is the release of confidential personal data to undesirable recipients. Old hard drives retain data via non-volatile memory, and, in my opinion, the only way those data can be reliably removed (or made inaccessible) is to destroy the hard drives; however, don't forget that most modern printers also retain data via their own non-volatile memories. There might also be other peripheral devices that store your data separate from the CPU hard drive.
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Good point.

Nuke your entire system from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
 
Definitely don't nuke them. All of your data would then be imprinted on the cosmic microwave background for the rest of time.
 
Tragic boating accident 25 miles offshore ...
 
Deelee said:
You could give it to the blend-tec guy -


Will it blend? That is the question.
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Hard drive smoke. Don't breathe it!

I actually bought one of those blenders.

Actually, while not used for hard drives, back in the day when the encryption gear used punched cards to set the keys, the security folk would have a blender to destroy the cards after use. If you read the book "The Falcon and the Snowman" about a guy who was stealing secrets from a defense contractor (true story), the security officers are making egg nog (alcoholic) in that blender. Amusingly, not too long after I read the book, I was sitting in the SCIF at Martin Marietta when the security officer came up with a blender full of eggnog.

This was before she noticed the map of the world on my office wall was printed in Russian.
 
Give it to the guys on the "fireworks gone wrong" thread ...
 
Take it to the edge of the Earth and drop it off.


Segue to another discussion…. this one’s about run it’s course.
 
Power it up and smack it against something hard. Hear the heads mill the coating off the platter. Done.
 
ARFlyer said:
There is a freeware that will overwrite the data with 0s. Last time I had to send a warranty hard drive in I overwrote it I think 10 times. The recommendation I believe is 3 times to make sure you got every byte.
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All 0s is bad as a slight pattern could still exist "under" the 0s. At least 5 passes alternating patterns, then 2 passes random or an arbitrary string. 35 pass Gutmann if you have too much time and paranoia on your hands.

The real question, what to do with old SSDs? They kinda lie to about actual location of data and idk if i can trust a hardware implemented "wipe" command.
 
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