Safest way to securely dispose of hard drives?

[Rawns]

Just wondering what is the safest way to dispose of hard drives to ensure no data can be recovered from them. Just got rid of my old man's computer for him and took it down the local recycle station, but I've removed the HDD's to prevent data theft.

[sparkeh]

This:

[Dins]

For my last few personal ones ive got rid of, i opened them up, removed the disks and just smashed em. Dont do it with your hands tho... they break skin really rather easy... xD

[X-13]

Kill it with fire.

[Rawns]

Wahoo! An excuse to go smashy smashy!

[tech_guy]

I had fun with an angle-grinder and half a dozen HDDs last week. Gloves and goggles a must. Wish I'd filmed it as the sparks were very pretty! Edited April 26, 2012 by tech_guy

[SYNACK]

How about this:

[Greenbeast]

i'd be inclined to put a hard drive in my gas forge when it's up to welding heat (1300C), that could be fun

[theriver]

DBAN, overwrites your disk with junk: Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing. Can take a while, but is easy (and free).

 

If you can't get the disk into a PC to do this, you can physically destroy the disks - I think some round here recommend drilling into the case and into the platters, though I've personally never tried this (mainly as I know I'd drill into my own leg in the process).

[3s-gtech]

Big hammer, plus strong screwdriver as a punch. For laptop HDDs, just a hammer will do fine - most if not all have glass platters!

[jinnantonnixx]

I've never liked destroying disks, it seems very wasteful.

 

A software wipe will do the trick - make sure it's a proper tool like the above-mentioned DBAN. A single pass will be sufficient.

 

Keep them as spares; you never know when they'll be handy. I had a panic with a failing disk on a latop and was able to copy most of it to a spare disk set up in a USB recovery rig. Very handy.

Edited April 26, 2012 by jinnantonnixx

[denzal2k4]

Biggest drill bit you can find and just whizz through the platters

[Abe]

DBAN, overwrites your disk with junk: Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing. Can take a while, but is easy (and free).

 

+1 for DBAN. I'm in the process of wiping a number of old servers' SCSI raid arrays at the moment. We either PXE boot into DBAN or boot from a CD-ROM, then use the default DoD Short setting (3 passes of random data).

 

For the Dell PERC RAID controllers we've been dealing with recently the best approach appears to be to break the array and configure one array for each disk so that they appear as separate disks in the BIOS. DBAN can then wipe them in parallel.

[jinnantonnixx]

... use the default DoD Short setting (3 passes of random data).

 

One pass should be enough.

Disk Wiping - One Pass is Enough | Anti-Forensics

 

"The Great Zero Challenge" was never accepted by any data recovery company. A disk was single-pass wiped with zeros and a prize was offered to anyone who could recover anything from the disk. Although it was a bit of a gimmick, nobody tried to do it.

Edited April 26, 2012 by jinnantonnixx

[Guest salan]

We used to use a company called Vogon that recover data. When asked about wiping hard disks, they had this reply:

How valuable is the data?

Is it worth mor ethen the hard disk?

If not then whats the problem?

If yes then physically destroy the thing. We make our money retreiving 'wiped data'

So there you have it. If you data could be worth mor ethen the cost of a hard disk, then destroy it (they reccomend a furnace).

If not then whats the problem?

alan

[gmj]

Nuke it from orbit....it's the only way to be sure.

[edutech4schools]

I put my one in a fire. The next day I was surprised to find an odd abstract shape that looked like a silver stalagmite with arms about 4inches high. thought it would have just bubbled down in to a messy pool.

[waltmanc]

I agree with jinnantonnixx - very wasteful, just use some disk-wiping software, unless, of course the disk is broken, then the drill comes out.

[Garacesh]

About a week ago I had to destroy our 2.5" finance HDD's..

 

Derpy moment.. Forgot they were made of glass.. Hurt pride ensued when I broke one by hand.

[Pete10141748]

Just the other day I passed a bunch of old recovery disks (which I no longer have the drive to read/wipe/reuse anyway) to the Site Agent here for destroying. She had a whale of a time with a hammer, drill and various other objects used to obliterate the disks!

[LiamH]

I used to like taking them to bits, nicking the really strong magnets out of them and the disks do make quite good air hockey style pucks.

 

would love one of these though

 

Edited April 26, 2012 by LiamH

[Earthling]

+1 for the hammer, though I prefer a 4lb club-hammer in close conjunction with a 4" or 6" nail.

[TomDunlop]

We use software to securely erase them, then it’s a quick dismantle and mix all the parts up in a box. Our local scrap yard gives us good money for the dismantled drives.

[pcstru]

Some charcoal, a container, some flame, some sand, a raw result and some paint and machining for a final product. Data recovery from that - not in this universe (and as an aside, the alu used on HD castings is pretty good quality).

 

[i'm sure someone will point out that this is a dangerous thing to do and may invalidate your warranty].

Edited April 26, 2012 by pcstru

[rich_tech]

I have used the disc companies tools on a couple of them before to write zeros to the disks, takes a good while but in effect I think it just fills the drive with zero's, that being said, when its been smashy time, hammer and screwdriver/chisel as needed - powerdrill can come in handy too for going through the platens.