disposing of old hard drives

[chrbb]

Got rid of lots of old computers but due to time constraints removed hard drives to deal with at a later date. They are all 6gb and smaller so am going to throw them but can't decide whether to use erasing software or a hammer! What does anyone else use?

[_Bat_]

Hammer and nails. A lot of fun too

[bossman]

defo hammer bang! bang!

 

have fun

[FN-GM]

Do both best to be sure. I was changing a computer for someone in the lakes, I pulled the hard drive out of the old one and explained to him why. He was a builder and he got a caterpillar JCB to run over it.

[_Bat_]

Do both best to be sure

 

Lol I think one is enough . You might wanna do both if you were working for MI5 or something

[localzuk]

Hard disks can be recovered from lots of damage types - the best is to go up a few stories and drop it out a window... The platters should shatter into very small pieces

[Andrew_C]

6mm drill bit though the controller chip AND the platter!

[tech_guy]

We've got a heavy-duty mechanical metal cutting guillotine in the workshop so we use it to cut the drives into quarters!

[enjay]

Your Chemistry Department can probably help you with a good acid or two.

 

Possibly a silly question, but how much sensitive data is actually on the hard disk though?

[sidewinder]

Possibly a silly question, but how much sensitive data is actually on the hard disk though?

 

Its a good point

We dont go overboard with ours. We wipe them but not to like military standards or anything

At the end of the day the main thing we are worried about is someone using the whole PC with our schools agreement OS on.

There is a minute chance some data could be recovered off the HD's but as no profiles are cached and as far as I know no SIMS data is stored locally, I cant see theres too much to worry about

 

Im sure someone will now come and state that we're not following the DPA correctly and that I should be shot at dawn for it but oh well

[stephenleak]

Lol I think one is enough . You might wanna do both if you were working for MI5 or something

 

They'd just leave them in the back of a taxi.

[mattx]

we use it to cut the drives into quarters!

 

Why can't you use Fdisk or Partition Magic like everyone else ? ;-)

[tech_guy]

Oh, we're just paranoid. And we like smashing things!

[Geoff]

I incinerate our platters.

[ChrisP]

usually there is a hole on one side of the drive covered with a silver sticker, stick a srewdriver in there and scratch it all up then smack it with a hammer, the Tech's love it

[Roopert]

If you really want to be paranoid, data can be recovered from a hard drive even if you damage the access boards, or even burning them (though if they are ashes i doubt this is the case - have seen melted ones recovered though!)

 

The easiest way that i have found is to erase the drive using a utility found on:

 

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

 

Reasonably fast and hopefully secure.

 

But make sure you smash it at the end - for stress relief if nothing else

[bishopsgarthstockton]

i scratch the platters surface with a screw driver and bend them.

 

I did once make the mistake of bending a laptop platter. turns out there made of glass. still finding fragments of glass around my office. lol

[tech_guy]

You used to be able to find a movie on YouTube of a HDD in a microwave - both blew up but I can't find it anymore. Plenty of videos of iPods in microwaves though - neat.

[laserblazer]

Here's a fun thing to do.

 

[mattx]

WA HA HA HA HA - that video's fantastic. Its also given me an idea........

[bishopsgarthstockton]

THAT SO COOL!!!! looks like the replicators of stargate, climbing the walls lol

[tech_guy]

Perhaps you could set it up to slice cucumbers or something?

[chrbb]

No sensitive data - just can't be ar*ed to connect to pc and run eraser thought I may as well bring them home and let my kids loose on them with a lump hammer. (before elf n safety get involved kids are actually 19 and 22 but still 'my kids'!)

[MrDarcy]

I did read a review once that looked at different software for permanently deleting data from hard-drives. They also included 'hammer' and 'industrial sander' as alternatives. The only one that made the drives completely unreadable even using forensic analysis was the sander, as you just completely scratch off the magnetic layer - no physical medium left to hold data!

 

Never tried it, mind.

[ICT_GUY]

Real world,

 

The only sensitive data on our school network is held in the teachers home area, even then its not that useful to anyone. The licence keys might be of use to someone but you can find those on the net for nowt.

 

Data recovery costs a load of $$$ and takes time (for broken disks, its cheap and easy for functional ones, fdisk will not remove your data) Electronically erasing a disk is only worth while if you intend to sell it on. (not likely when 120gig HDs cost £30 or less).

 

Break them with a hammer and be done with it, or if like me you own several large caliber Black Powder pistols, use them for target pratice.

 

Oh and MS does a free tool that will erase HDs or just the free space on them, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Security/SDelete.mspx