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How to Say Goodbye to Old Hard Drives?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm wondering if anyone else out there has a stack of old hard drives sitting around and doesn't know what to do with them. I always remove the hard drives of my parents' and friends' computers before they recycle them or get a new computer, so now I've got a whole bunch sitting around. One, I'd like to dispose of them and know that whatever data was there is gone, but before that, I'd like to hook them up, one by one, and scan them to make sure there's nothing vital there worth saving. Some are years old and may be totally dead for all I know, but is there a good system for hooking up a hard drive as an additional device, perhaps via USB? And what's a pretty good way to ensure that someone else won't pull them out later on and find usable data?" Well to start with you could always use your hard drives to make electricity or create a decorative wind chime. There are also many different options to ensure that your data doesn't fall into the hands of the enemy. What other suggestions can folks come up with?
Hire one of those disillusioned young IT workers!
At work, its well known that all past warranty dead drives go to me, as well as ones that work but are too slow and small to be useful. And I make sure the drive in question is definitely wiped :)
For the curious, it usually takes a hot 357 magnum to penetrate and clear most modern drives. 9mm and 45acp either bounce off, or don't exit the drive.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
To 'clean' the drives.
Sledgehammer works good too.
We always take them apart. The magnets are fun to play with.
Will it blend?
Yes. Go buy yourself a harddrive enclosure that has a USB interface.
Smash the things into itty-bitty pieces. Very (very very) strong magnets work well too.
Get yourself one of these.
friendship hard disk platters.
nothing says "i love you" like a separated platter put on a necklace. nothing says "bling" like it, either, for that matter.
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
Neat little device
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaI-7FBjr1Q
Someone narrate that in a cheesy Australian accent please.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
My kids love the magnets inside, and the copper-goldish platters are cool too.
These things are great:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1945393&Sku=S457-1104
they work, they're simple, when closed they're virtually indestructible, when open, you can swap drives in seconds, hot-swapped and everything. IDE and SATA. I've used multiple brands, they're all the same. Some have a power switch if you care.
The problem with DBAN is that the drive has to be functional. Great for when you're selling hardware, but not so great when you're trying to destroy data on an otherwise worthless drive.
Sledgehammers are fun, but I prefer taking a grinder to the platters.
Get an external USB enclosure, hook up the drive and connect it to a PC, get a Live CD of some sort, write over the drive with alternations from /dev/null and /dev/urandom a couple of times, and you're done. Rinse, rather, repeat for other drives.
If the drives are IDE/ATA/SATA, this works well and is a better idea than rotating them through an enclosure. (I find that the captive cables in USB drive enclosures are not very robust. This does not share that problem.)
.sig: file not found
I have one of these for situations like this. It's pretty handy; it also comes in really great for harddrive upgrades:
http://www.coolmaxusa.com/productDetails.asp?item=CD-350-COMBO&details=features&subcategory=converter&category=converter
...and pull out the magnets. They are incredibly strong and who doesn't like playing with magnets?
Rip them open, pull the platters out one by one, and make a high definition mirror, knowing every time you look at yourself you're doing it on several levels.
A drill bit is cheaper and easier. It also avoids those awkward ricochets and overshoots that put holes in people. This makes it difficult for all but the most determined people to read.
Dropping it in salt water is a sure way to destroy the data but this takes longer.
As for buried date treasure, don't bother. If you did not find it when you put the drive down and have not missed it, you don't need it.
Personally I just use a straight IDE-to-USB 2.0 cable. It seems so wrong having a hard drive out in the open while it's running - it's probably not good for the drive in the longterm vibration-wise, but if you're just doing this to check the drives out before you dump them that's no big deal.
You could get an external drive caddy but if you've got a lot of drives to go through then it's probably not worth the hassle of having to switch them in and out.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
If you're really worried about losing some data that might be needed, why not just buy a 500GB drive for $100 and copy everything from all the drives to it? I seriously doubt that even with a large stack that you really have more than a few tens of gigs of data, given that most of those drives are probably only a few gigs in size anyway. It would also be a lot quicker just to copy everything than to sit and go through the files on each drive to determine what needs saving. A cheaper alternative might be to just burn the drives to DVDs, I bet a lot of them aren't even 4.7GB in size and would fit on a single disk.
If the drives are broken, take the platters out and sell them to a local scrap place. They are aluminum. Sometimes the cases are aluminum too.
Plenty of people have fooled around with hard drive platters as bladeless Tesla turbines...though the new base materials shatter more easily than the old.
-Benjamin Vander Jagt
Well, I'm not sure what all the materials are in a modern hard disc. I'd imagine that it's a non-ferromagnetic structural disc and then a bunch of thin films of various materials. And I bet there are a bunch of materials that aren't so good for you. I guess it's a matter of hard hard it is to scratch or wipe them off. Maybe I'm just paranoid...but when I opened a recent one, I was careful to wash my hands afterwards.
I guess my point is that it's important to keep materials in mind when taking apart electronics.
You can make metal roses out of the platters.
Having a hard time finding a howto though.
Use them to build a massively parallel sequential search engine:
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?CheapMassivelyParallelSequentialSearch
Table-ized A.I.
...go fishing for blackmail material. You'll find that Christmas 2008 will be much better for you than Christmas 2007.
I have a handy tool I found at a local computer store. It is a SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 adapter.
:)
Here is one from TigerDirect:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2329300&CatId=470
This operates just like plugging in a memory stick. Great for parsing through old drives for data quickly.
Not funny!
How paranoid must one really be?
Hit the drives hard with a decent size hammer, a couple of times on each side, just so that anyone can plainly see that the drives are toast and totally useless as computer parts.
After the smashing, just toss 'em in a bucket. When the bucket fills up, take it down to your friendly neighborhood scrap yard. If you're lucky, they'll pay a "dirty aluminum" rate for it. If you're unlucky, they'll pay a miscellaneous scrap rate, which will be considerably lower (around a nickel per pound, here).
Or if you're really adventurous/thrifty, you can break them down into their different constituent metals (keep it simple and just sort into piles of aluminum, zinc, magnetic steel, and nonmagnetic stainless), which will maximize the amount of cash you'll be paid.
Honestly: Nobody wants to invest the time, effort, money, and energy into trying to scavenge data from a physically broken hard drive at the bottom of a scrap hopper without knowing, in advance, what is contained therein.
But if you're really paranoid, you can always yank the platters and melt them into little aluminum ingots first. It just doesn't seem worth the effort for household data . . .
In any event, you can be sure that the drives will, at some point, be recycled into something new.
Kid-proof tablet..
Will it blend?
A: I would imagine so.
I'm trying to access an ancient Quantum Prodrive 85 megger. I completely forgot what all the LBA/large C/H/S stuff was all about. Can't get the computer to access the drive. Oh well, off to bed and google tomorrow.
When I worked for the Canadian military for a summer, the procedure we had was to open 'em up, pull out the platters, and gouge the crap out of them with a screw driver.
Sometimes low-tech just works.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
A 1/8 inch high-speed drill bit in the drill press does wonders. Punch through the top cover, platters, base, circuit board. Repeat in a second location if desired. Quick and effective, particularly on glass platters (and the sticker on the drive says "rattling noise is normal").
If the PCBs are still good take them out and sell them to people with the same model drive who need a new PCB for old drive to get important data off.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
Take a big hammer to them. The drive magnets you get out of them are kind of fun to play with.
1-800-4SAURON Very affordable rates. 100% guarantee. J
Build a homemade blast furnace in your back yard. Use coal as fuel and a leaf blower as a bellows. Hard drives are mostly aluminum, which melts at the relatively low temperature of about 1200 Fahrenheit.
One time I put a hard drive in, and the rest of the evening I would randomly get brilliant purple sparks out of the furnace. Maybe the metals in the magnets?
My co-worker has a sledge hammer at home for just such a purpose.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I just disposed of a stack of 20 HDs from my company's retired machines. 3/4" drill through the case, plant a solid punch (an awl would probably work too) against the platter, then give it a couple of whacks with the mallet. Direct, physical damage to the platter is a must. Don't listen to these pikers who only hit the outside of the casing.
I'm of the opinion that the best option is physical destruction. So...
Take your drives down to the local rifle range. Arrange as desired, and work on your marksmanship.
Once done, clean up the junk and dispose of properly.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I was told our local shredder truck will toss drives in the shredder just like the paper. Not sure what the cost is, but if you have 10 or more drives, it is highly unlikely someone will take the time to piece the platters back together enough to read any data off of them.
While shooting them is fun. Remember shooting a hard object risks the round returning to the firing line or being deflected somewhere other than the backstop. Please use proper gun saftey and not cause another person to claim we all should not own guns.
I made some contemporary art out of my old hard drives:
http://polynomial.org/disc_wall2.jpg
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
All electronics that fail me suffer the same fate.
... until its no longer fun to do either one.
Smash, apply ethanol, burn, smash, apply ethanol, burn
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Make a robotic fox with nine tails out of the old stepper motors. Use the platters as frisbees/coasters/shims/armor/handmirrors/windchimes and the samarium cobalt magnets to stick photos on your refrigerator.
I used to work at a nonprofit agency that took (among other things) computers that were then handed out to community centers, senior centers, churches, etc. People were always donating computers sans hard drives because they didn't want anyone to steal their info. So the warehouse had literally hundreds of unusable computers. PLEASE use the commercial or free open source package of your choice to wipe the thing then donate it! Nonprofits that deal in second hand computers are in dire need of spare hard drives of even modest capacity. And no, the lady who wants to print up the church newsletter is not some 133t h4x0r who is going to recover the wiped data and steal your identity.
I haven't really found a use for them but the magnets inside hard drives are some of the most powerful I have ever come across. I mean seriously "will cause bodily harm if it clamps on your skin" type power. I have a whole stack of them and together it's just ridiculous.
If you don't want to bother with the whole enclosure, ngear makes a thing that is more of a quick tool.
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=17275&vpn=NG-RDRIVE-USB&manufacture=nGear%20Technologies%20Inc.
As you can see here: http://img.ncix.com/images/17275_All.jpg It just plugs into the back of a 2.5 or 3.5 ATA hard drive, and gives you USB. Also comes with a molex connectorized power supply. I've found it handy in my computer testing.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
The magnets are insanely strong, they are well worth keeping, you will need torx screwdrivers to open the hard drives though, but they are not expensive to buy.
I find the platters seem to be made out of aluminium, and will melt and turn to dust in a fire. Nobody is ever recovering anything from that.
A while back, I disposed of some drives - mostly unreadable - that might have once contained confidential information (they came from an employer who did a lot of credit card transactions).
step 1: slam against concrete floor repeatedly, until hearing bits shake about inside.
step 2: with the claw-end of a hammer, smash the exposed circuit boards.
step 3: submerge drives in a bucket of salt water for a month.
step 4: put drives in Hefty bag and cover with cat litter and cat shit (a psychological barrier to deter exploration of the bag's contents).
step 5: city dumpster.
Probably overkill - but it was fun.
http://www.geekstuff4u.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=630 Eject the hard drives like they are a tape.
The IBM Deathstar platters, I suppose rebranded to Hitachi now, are glass.
Glass platters look just like aluminum ones. It's hard to tell the difference until they break. When they do break, zillions of ultra-sharp slivers of glass go flying everywhere. It's way worse than breaking typical glass.
For the curious, it usually takes a hot 357 magnum to penetrate and clear most modern drives. 9mm and 45acp either bounce off, or don't exit the drive.
:-)
That's why I prefer a 12 gauge slug at fairly close range. The impact can be best described as "glorious". Wear eye protection, I like to use a full face dirtbike helmet since bits of metal go everywhere.
BTW, the slugs do wonders on an old washing machine too
http://www.mt3co.com/
I mean "aggregate" as a noun, not a verb. A couple of years ago I was building a two foot high concrete border wall around my patio. After pouring about half of the concrete, I threw in a bunch of old hard disks and other computer parts, and then topped it off with the remaining concrete. Flagstone went on top, and the finished border looks quite stylish. No one ever suspects that there are computer parts buried inside. :)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
you can always practice your data recovery skills using a torx screwdriver, and some very careful hands. I'm in the process of swapping platters between some identical drives just for the hell of it.
Outside of that umm.....there are always some really fun magnets to be pulled from old drives.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Sitting upon my desk, containing a 250GB hard drive, is a nice(IMO) NexStar 3 enclosure.
Connect it to the computer via USB2.0. Connect the drive(no need to actually place it in the enclosure) and you're good to go.
Here's the one I have(first result, as of this writing).
Drill through the drill with a large drills 1cm or 1/2 inch or better
At least one hole through the disks, and one hole through the circuit board.
Then put it inside a bucket filled with salt water for a month or so
That should freeze the bearings and corrode the plates enough to make recovery a royal pain.
of course, if you want disassemble and retrieve the magnets first, that's cool. You can then pull the plates, and then bend/twist them into ashtrays.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'm one of those young, dissilusioned techies... We support provincial government computers. for disposal, we have a drill. Just can't beat low-tech.
I suppose you can use some USB to IDE something-or-other. I'm old-school. Personally I'd hook up a spare machine, pull any hard disks out of it, and hook each old disk up in turn on it. Hook the machine up to a LAN and copy files you want to keep over the network. At this point, you put a Ubuntu LiveCD in, boot that and use it to look through the files and copy off whatever you want to keep. Reboot, eject the LiveCD and pop in the dban CD -- this erases any disks in the computer.
At my work, we use the 3-pass DOD wipe to follow regulations. Personally, I think the single pass with 0's is safe enough; that will stop someone from plugging the disk in and getting any info back. And, I think personally that with any modern disk (newer than the old MFM and RLL disks) the desnity and head-tracking quality is probably high enough that I doubt even removing the platters and analyzing them will reveal any previous data. But, 3-pass adds that extra safety (it is 0's, then random data, then a final 0's pass.)
For reference, here is how we handle hundreds of disks a month...
------------------
Where I work we process hard drives by the hundreds. The department I work at is quite cheap so we have built our infrastructure entirely on surplus equipment that comes through. We have:
8 x Gateway 4200. (These are very antiquated but the newer Optiplexes actually seem to wipe drives slower)
2 x Promise ATA66 controller per machine
A modified dban CD is put into the CD-ROM on each machine. The other onboard IDE channel is unused; 4 ribbon cables are run out the side of each machine (hooked to the Promise cards), allowing 4 IDE hard disks to be hooked up to each machine without having to check master/slave jumpers or anything.
Our dban CD is modified to go straight into a 3-pass DOD wipe of all hard disks (instead of the default, which stops to ask what wipe to use).. We use 3-pass due to regulations. For disks that fail to detect or fail during wipe, we have a recycler that physically destroys the disks with some sort of drill press.
We also have a single IDE to 2.5" notebook IDE adapter to handle notebook disks; if the notebook runs we'll put the dban disk straight in it but most we get are utterly fucked.
--------
To handle non-IDE disks:
3 x IBM something-or-others. These are SCSI rack-mount servers. I don't recall the models. These are for SCSI drives in IBM-style drive sleds. 6 drives per machine.
2 x HP Netserver. I think 4 disks apiece? For SCSI drives in Netserver drive sleds.
1 x Optiplex GX270. Not hooked up yet, but this will be used for SATA drives.
Again, a custom DBAN CD per machine.
-------------
The fate of the disks: Some are sold individually. The rest are placed back into machines (mainly Dell Optiplexes). We have 7 stations where we can plug in VGA, keyboard, power and ethernet, and an automated Ubuntu 7.10 installer PXE boots over the ethernet. Put the hard disk into the machine, plug it in, go into the bios to check boot order and enable network boot, let 'er rip. Walk away (usually to work on more computers...) and the install is done in 20 minutes.
just unscrew the case - you'll be looking right at the drive platters. If you're lazy, you'll just take the screw driver and stab/bend/scrape the platters which will make them unreadable. The platters are easy to turn. Who do you know, has the technology to read a disk with a giant gouge/crack in it - the FBI? - Why would they read my hard drive?
You could also BBQ them
Sledghammer
Axe
throw them in a pond
bury them
But to be honest - most peoplewould not even spen the effort to do anything with them if you threw it out in the trash with some stinky chicken carcass and rotten milk. - Would you? People recover, or try to recover stuff from hard drives from companies, because there might be useful info on them. How much useful info can you get from some schmuck down the street, and would it be useful/worth your time? - Probably not.
..........FULL STOP.
I hook them into an old pc, wipe them with BCWipe, and then dispose of them. My preferred method is to put them in old machines, install Linux, and give them to Goodwill.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This is a personal problem. There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable use of high explosives. This is not one of those exceptions.
I use cables etc. : Newer USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter. Plug in and then clone your hard drive or just copy parts. A little different than making a CD or DVD of the data but it also allows you to copy and save data from your second drive, yeah the one you use to hold all your critical data. Most of our sensitive data is not that large in volume, it is usually the programs that take up the space. Also it is videos and pictures that take up space. Label the drive and stick it away for that day when your primary HD crashes. CBS
Back in highschool, my girlfriend and I used to have a ball making various crafts out of hard drive platters. I think she still has the large wall art "thing" (not sure what else to call it) we made. If nothing else, they make great objects to throw discus-style at the endless numbers of people trying to hit on your hot geeky girlfriend. (They learn will quick after a platter or two to the forehead.)
If you want to ensure no data will ever come off of the platters, blowtorches work wonders.
I bought the #6 and #8 Torx bits required to take apart most hard drives. The magnets are wonderful, especially some of the 6-8 platter SCSI drive magnets. The platters get thrown in the street and beat with the pointy end of a claw hammer. There's probably someone in the world that could read the data after that, but they're busy doing something else I'm sure.
Dekker Dreyer
No one has ever demonstrably retrieved data from hard drive platters that have been zeroed out (to my knowledge--please correct me if I'm wrong--I know there have been theories suggesting it might be possible, but I've never heard of any means for actually doing so). None have recovered data from smashed platters without a lab in clean room conditions. Anyone with access to that is unlikely to be dumpster diving for old drives to see what might be recoverable just for kicks.
If the drive works and is modern enough to be connected to a current computer on hand, zero it out--a bootable disk/disc of *nix, g4u, BootItNg, or random hard drive utilities are all free-as-in-beerly available and do the trick quite easily. Otherwise, the sledgehammer is quite effective. Hell, use an axe and split some logs while you're at it.
Just don't try to resell a working drive without zeroing it out. I've heard rumors of ATM hard drives on ebay that got a quick format and still contained sensitive account information. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/whatever [let simmer till the blinky lights stop] is your friend**.
**unless the drive is mounted. Or if you're following advice from an IRC channel. Or if there are midgets. Damn the midgets.
I drive a nail through the case and platter.
So ... I just bought a 500GB HD with an external USB case and tried to copy the entire drive over to the new external drive. But it keeps giving me "Access Denied" errors for certain otherwise innocuous files no good reason.
Question - is there any Windoze program out there that can override XP permissions and/or make for smoother, better drive copying with more control?
Thanks for any help.
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
In the last book of the Evil Genuis series they describe how to take a dead HDD clunk bamb, rig it with a 555 timer and a few pieces and you have a clunk bamb. Stick it in your victims PC and after the predesigned time it'll start making that dreaded HDD-is-dying sounds. I haven't, but I intend to LOL.
I made an hdd platter wind chime...not exactly a good sound but it's pretty creapy in a storm o_0
Gut the hard drive but take care to make sure the outside looks fairly untampered. If there were multiple platters you can end up with a lot of internal space where the drive used to be. Then put stuff into the gutted harddrive that you want to keep secret. Screw top back on, and for best results, stick in extra computer. The best part is, not only is the harddrive and unsuspecting location, but on top of that even if someone did suspect something they can't just open it because opening a harddrive is destruction of property and if they are wrong, then they would get in trouble. The only catch is, I'm not sure what kind of chemicals might be inside the drive. However I've done this before. Yes I know this isn't necessarily a direct answer to the question, but it definitely makes it harder to recover data when the platters are all warped and scratched from being ripped out, and it doesn't waste as much.
Bathroom Mirror. I kid you not.
--Pathway
I always open them up, and remove the magnets because magnets are fun. Those are some pretty strong magnets too.
Then, I take out the platters, bend them into quarters, and hit them with a hammer.
Then, I keep hitting them with a hammer while drinking beer.
Sometimes I do other things.
Why not dismantle those drives and use them to store your spare parts and other assorted treasure? That way they don't go to waste and you can clean up some of your clutter at the same time.
http://www.wiebetech.com/
these guys make all manner of drive docks to easily hook up a bare drive to USB, firewire, SATA, etc -
every geek should have one of these -
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/ComboDock.php
Which is what your wanting to do despite all the weasel words.
/dev/sda)
So your a voyeuristic creeper OK. Nice you made the announcement on Slashdot.
Get a USB enclosure and mount em up.
Then.. just so nobody else can do what you just did, take a hammer and break the circuit board.
Still need to cover your tracks?
Drill a couple holes completely through the drive.
Want to recycle the drives instead of destroying them but still want to cover your creepiness?
In Linux (virtually any distribution including live ones) use 'dd' as in:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024K
and cook until done... (assuming the drive to be toasted is in fact
In Windows do a low level format. Several utilities exist from Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor etc... or Google for one. Or use one of dozens of hard drive wipe utilities.
Personally I use Linux when wiping old drives since it is unknown what virii lurk and don't even bother looking for any naked pics of grandma or the kids.
There ya go wierdo. Have a blast.
Here is a great drive bay panel that lets you plug in drives easily: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811997006
Spinrite http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm/ if the drives are damaged, Darik's Boot and Nuke http://dban.sourceforge.net/ to erase the data, and a six pack of Smithwicks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithwicks for the memories.
From this hard drive recovery guy, if your drive is multiplatter, you can just take it apart, twist the disks, simply because the servo data won't align again, and the drive would be unrecoverable.
For single platter, you could just take it apart and expose the surface to sandpaper, magnet, knife, etc to physically damage the platter enough to make the drive not worth recovering.
Besides, the opening of the drive would expose the platter to dust, and that and of itself could make the drive full of errors, given enough dust.
Although, drives that you can't get to work at all, probably should be disassembled, and the recording surfaces physically destroyed. If there is a possibility of social security numbers or credit card numbers having been stored on the drives, you want to be sure you've at least made it so salvagers can't do something easy like moving the platters to a working drive and just finding stuff you didn't know was there.
/null.
I'm thinking a bulk tape eraser held close to a spinning exposed recording surface is not going to leave much readable without significant effort, so that might be something to do before sanding the surface a bit.
Wiping working drives --
Old Macs are useful for issuing low-level format commands of the sort that doesn't destroy the tracking information, if you have one with the right controller just sitting around. I probably would pull the cover anyway, just to watch the heads seeking to every cylinder, to make sure neither the OS nor the drive itself is short-circuiting the hard commands. If you have a dust-free environment, pulling the cover to watch the heads move isn't likely to do damage. And, because the salvagers will be taking a look at the drive in passing, you do want to give them less to see.
I might, even, after doing the physical format, write random data over the whole disk.
Linux and BSD systems have a good sources for random data, and random data is going to hide sensitive erased data better than
You might then install an OS on the drive, just to make it a little less obvious that data has been erased, because some salvagers are a little overly ambitious after all.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Bullet to the hard drive = data not on the part of the platters damaged can be recovered
Remove magnets = all data can be recovered
Sledge hammer = any where from 60 to 90 percent of the data can be recovered
so on and so forth.
Let me break it down for you: To remove any chance of data recovery the platters have to be completely destroyed.
Blunt force and shock only destroys the circuitry and mechanical parts reliably. Some of the magnetic fields on the platters are damaged but with a quick disassembly and the right hardware/software the data could be recovered. The formating and files might be a bit garbled but some one trying hard enough would almost certainly be able to reconstruct large portions of the data. You're average computer geek could do it if he know what he was doing.
Removing parts of the drive only works until the platters are taken out and put in another drive of the identical model or run through special equipment.
Damaging or destroying the platters partially still leaves parts of data readable, given access to the proper equipment... something most wouldn't have.
I would suggest an incinerator or strong acid.
All that said. What is the point? Run a good secure erase software on it and call it done. Anything supporting multiple passes with guttman should do an excellent job, leaves the drive functioning, and no one without a lot of skill, hardware, and time, would be able to even tell that there WAS data on the drive before its current format, much less what that data was. As for hooking it up to the computer via USB I personally use this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002
J
Turn them into a cool clock with a nifty, nerdy, hack job.
http://alan-parekh.com/projects/hard-drive-clock/
Worried about retained data? A few rare earth magnets would take care of that, no?
I had this old 4.3 gig SCSI HD that still worked but I no longer possessed a controller card to run it. Clearly a useless drive but instead of throwing it away, taking it apart, or smashing it so nobody could read what was on it; I decided to pull up the floorboard in my old bedroom of my parents 105 year old Victorian house. The same floorboard that I kept porn under before the world had an Internet.
I left it there under the floor waiting to be found someday. I had a good laugh imagining what someone will think when they finally find it. What would you think of a HD you found hidden in the floor? The drive isn't blank but I figure that if someone actually manages to get it working at some far off time then they deserve to see it.
Tinfoil hat? Naa, I long since replaced it with a reinforced titanium alloy.
Yes. Open computer. Plug in drive at appropriate cable (usually IDE, just unplug your DVD-player if you haven't got any free IDE cables). Boot computer. Look at drive contents.
In general, the answer is "just throw them in the trash". Because very few people will bother to read your harddrive. Now, if you were Naomi Campbell, some members of the press might find it interesting enough to steal them from your trash and look at the contents, but so what, you're not Naomi Campbell.
If that's not good enough, try reformatting the disk. If that's not good enough try to overwrite all data several times with different patterns. There are several freeware and shareware programs to do that, for all common operating systems. If the disk fails before you're able to do that (and that's not good enough for you) (or you want to save time) try to physically destroy the disk. This can be done with cheap tools such as a drill, a sledgehammer, or a hammer and chisel. Once you've opened the casing and can access the casing, you can even use a pair of scissors. But there are more fun ways. A cheap, fun, and realistic solution is to find somewhere they are building or maintaining roads, and ask the guy driving the road roller if he can help you. Other fun but harder to find solutions involve impact crushers, metal smelts, and... well you get the idea!
We drill a hole through the case and the platers. It takes only 30 seconds per drive: faster than a single pass of dd with /dev/zero and it works for drives with dead controllers. Don't wipe then with several passes of random data; you have better thinks to do with your time.
Old Hard Drive Platters make great coasters (Drink Mats).
Th ehole in the bottom stops them sticking to the bottom of cups and glasess
Because you always need a smart fox!
Prop the HD up with a tooth pick. Put a piece of cheese right next to the toothpick. If you use one of the really old heavy as fuck HDs, you'll be having mouse pizza for breakfast.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
You can get various USB IDE/SATA controllers which will let you hook up an old drive easily, there are also SCSI controllers but they are far less common.
In the case of really old (ie very small) drives, i just create a compressed dd image of them incase i will need them in future, as unlikely as that might be it's quite easy to archive several late 90s hard drives onto a DVD these days.
Then i overwrite the drives using shred or dban (http://dban.sourceforge.net) and throw them out...
A bigger problem is dead or semi dead drives, as i'm unable to shred them... I usually opt for Thermite. Thermite is easy to make, and makes sure no data will ever be retrieved from drives.
This: http://www.ev4.org/thermite/IMG00020.jpg used to be 3 hard drives.
The aluminum cased drives completely melt very rapidly, to the point you can stir them with a stick... The steel cased drives take far more heat before they become molten but it's still more than doable. You might also want to strip off the circuit board before you set the drives on fire because the burning circuit boards can produce some pretty nasty smoke.
The site http://www.ev4.org/thermite/ contains a few more pictures of thermite'd drives and a small mobile phone video...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
First thing I would do is purchase a hard drive enclosure. They run about 30-40 dollars and will hook up any ATA/IDE hard drive via USB 2.0 Some hard drives that have failed due to read failures will not be able to be hooked up in this fashion, but otherwise you wouldn't have any problem. After you have ensured there is no data worth retrieving, there is a handy program called boot and nuke that will write over every sector with random data, ensuring that there is no viable information left on the hard drive. Afterwards, feel free to resell or recycle the hard drives in whatever fashion you deem fit.
I had a drive failure on my laptop. In order to salvage its files, I hooked its hard drive up to a USB enclosure and ddrescue'd it to an image on my desktop machine. I was rather surprised to see no errors on the entire disk, even though it wouldn't even boot any more.
Turns out there were errors; lots of them. But the controller in the USB enclosure never bothered to tell me about it. I could copy an error-prone sector of the drive and get back different data every time, with not a single error reported. You can't perform effective data recovery if you don't even know when the errors happen.
Perhaps it was just a poor quality enclosure? Maybe, but it's not something you can tell from looking at the box. I have very little faith in USB enclosures after this, and other problems I've had - no SMART error reporting, general flakiness. I just don't trust them. Next time I'm going eSATA.
I took one out last week with a horizontal saw with a fine pitch blade for cutting hard metal.
I sawed directly through the middle of the platter, cutting through the motor. It made a very neat cutaway study. Might make some art with it, dunno. It was also fun to watch.
I guess this is pretty secure!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYPCPB1g3o
Newegg/a has a bunch of IDE to USB adapters.
I have friends that demo'd this process for me (I got to toss a few 10M or so hard drives in the shredder). Here's a link (http://www.eworldrecyclers.com/index.php?page=datasecurity&menu=services&submenu=ShredSample) It's pretty effective considering all that's left is little mangled pieces.
I keep old, but not dead, drives around for when I need extra swap space on a computer. Stick in an old io card and stick a couple old drives in and you have some swap space that won't wear out or slow down your main drives.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Say something like "It's not you, it's me. We had a good time. Can i call you in a couple of months?"
I always find that a couple pounds of thermite in a clay potting plant does a pretty good job of melting old hard drives into a glob of molten metal. Good luck recovering any data from that. It's Geek Squad proof!
Bear the following text in mind; it is printed out by the 'sudo' program the first time a user runs it: We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.
All these posts and not one of you geeks has tented your fingers and reveled in the destructive glory of thermite! Are you guys having an off day or what?
Side note: Burning molten holes directly through hard drives via hyper-hot compounds is both effective and satisfying.
25 ml of gasoline and a camping stove, that would be _more_ than enough.
Just because the iron-platinum compounds used in modern HDs have a very high curie-temperature doesnt mean that the tiny magnetic domains dont become superparamagnetic at a few 100C at most.
Otherwise, just erase them.
All this "we can real deleted files because of remanent magnetisation" is _CRAP_ . This was possible 15 years ago, when servos were misaligning over time.
And may 10 years ago, when bits were still sized in um. Nowadays, the spatial resolution of HD heads is in the same order of magnitude as magnetic force microscopy.
I know a scientist working with magnetic materials who is actually trying to use perpenticular recording HD heads in a scanning microscopy, just because the technique is so fast.
Reading even a non-deleted hd is a long, hard experience with MFMs. Take your second per byte. Deleted is just impossible (superparamagnetic limit again. If the domain is polarized in a way the drive reads 0, there is simply not enough magnetic moment left to form any kind of "1" near it thats not thermally fluctuating). Even if it _were_ possible, we would be talking about days per kbyte with expensive instruments. Even _finding_ a file could take months.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I would suggest something like this http://dban.sourceforge.net/ does a secure wipe on all drives on a machine, guys at work use it to wipe disks on decommissioned kit.
I get the magnets and use platters as coasters.
Seriously a hammer works best.
Just beat the crap out of it.
Think of a bad manager, high maintenance user, or some kid from the entitlement generation...
Take your bucket of old hard drives to a Combat Robotics event (for a list of upcoming ones, see http://www.buildersdb.com/) and watch them get turned into shrapnel.
We also recycle a wide range of other consumer goods, from printers to refrigerators.
"World Domination - a fun, family activity"
This is right out of one of the DoD instructions, how to dispose of unclassified hard drives (paraphrased):
In an approved facility and on an approved surface (concrete), wearing appropriate safety gear (goggles and hearing protection) strike the hard drive repeatedly with a heavy object (a sledgehammer) until it is physically destroyed.
I tell you, Marines have all sorts of fun following those instructions.
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
that Thermite hasnt been offered as a widely approved of way of getting rid of hard drives for good. I did see a home made blast furnace ... which is pretty cool i have to say.
...
mmm Thermite
I use a Scythe Kama Connect 2 USB gadget. It plugs straight into SATA, normal IDE, and laptop IDE drives. You connect the other side to your PC with USB2, and plug it into the mains. It's the easiest way I've found to read old disks - no need to open your case, no need to worry about mounting the drive. (The drive & adapter just sit on your desk).
And on re-reading what I just wrote it sounds like an advert. So I ought to clarify that I don't work for Scythe, QuietPC, or any of the other companies involved. I'm just a happy owner of one of these (and we've got a couple at work, so it's not just me that thinks they're good).
There are companies that will let you FedEx them a box of hard drives and shred them for some not-free-but-not-high price (I think I remember it being $25 a drive). They'll provide you back a letter of destruction. Most are set up to deal with large corporate customers, but I recall at least two that would let you set up an account on their web site.
:)
I've been meaning to do this, but I always seem to have at least one computer that's "about to" get its drives replaced, so I keep waiting on it.
Oh yeah, don't forget to pack your hard drives very poorly with no good protection when you ship them!
Get a USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter from your local computer retail store.
/dev/hd? device.
... I don't know to what forensic recovery attempts might yield but it would be awfully expensive for the attempt.
Hook the unit up.
If you have a linux box you can use GNU shred to write random data over the raw
What I've done is run shred with 3 iterations of random data and a fourth of just zeros.
My former drives are more or less unrecoverable at that point
After making sure that there is no data that needs to be kept on any old hard drives, I take them to the range and shoot them. .223 Remington rounds punch nice holes through them. 3 or 4 strategically placed shots, making sure that you hit the platters, seems to work pretty well. I would be surprised if much data could be recovered from discs that are physically missing a decent percentage of their area. Of course, the less fun way to achieve the same end is to use a drill press and just drill multiple holes through the platters.
If you do go the firearms route, make sure you keep at least 10 yards between you and the drive (to avoid any potential injury from ricochets or flying hard drive parts, make sure you have a safe backstop behind the drive(s), and use a rifle caliber. I've found that most hand gun rounds won't fully penetrate the platters in a drive.
The dry fish swims alone.
not for security, although you could, say, scour the platters with sandpaper if that's your concern.
I take them apart to admire the incredible workmanship that goes into them; the mirror polished platters and the wonderfully light head mechanisms that float so incredibly close over them.
Hard disks may be mass produced and cheap, but the care and perfection that goes into them would set most jewelers to shame. They are really works of beauty.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I have had the same problems before. I solved it by taking the hard drives completly apart taking the disks out running them through a knife sharpner and I have a stack of not lethal but hurty throwing disks incase of any home invasions.
"Drive Fast Kill Slow"
Open the drives by punching holes using a hammer and a heavy screwdriver -- you just need to make a couple of holes, not take it apart.
Drop drives in a bucket of salt water. Let 'em sit for a day.
Pull 'em out and let them sit in the air for a few days before you throw them away. They'll rust enough to not be readable by anyone.
A friend of mine once wrote a message to archeologists. It was a sheet of paper, hidden in an old furniture item. It was discovered a couple of decades later, when this person was already the father of two kids.
:-)
Boy, they had a good laugh... so I was told..
The saddest poem
...comes in the form of a dozen willing volunteers armed with .22 calibre air rifles, a thirty metre range, and LOTS of ammo. Damn, that's fun.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The classic BFH. Bigger the better. It's messy, but quite satisfying on a stressful day. Seems to me that an enterprising tech could sell drive destruction time by the minute for those working in Dilbert-esque situations. Line 'em up and take 'em out. Reminds me of the printer/fax beat-down scene from "Office Space."
2. Search for p0rn on said drive(s).
3. Use the "Office Space method" to destroy the drive(s).
4. ???
5. Profit!
Ingredients:
500gm bag of Aluminum filings.
500gm of Iron Oxide (rust)
1 table spoon of potassium permanganate
1 table spoon of glycerin.
1 clay plant pot (with hole at bottom)
Method:
1.) Well mix the Iron Oxide with the Aluminum filings
2.) Place plant pot on top of HDD.
3.) Place mixture from step 1 in plant pot
4.) Place table spoon of potassium permanganate on top of mixture in plant pot.
5.) Pour the glycerin onto the potassium permanganate
6.) RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN TO A SAFE DISTANCE.
This will ensure an unreadable HDD.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flamebait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Finally, somebody explained this!
.sig: No such file or directory
i know this is off topic a bit, but perhaps apropos...
but the thing that amazes me the most is full-blown working computers(cpu, monitor, keyboard, mouse and sometimes even printers)left in alleys as garbage. in the last three years i've rescued, repaired and given away/sold nearly a dozen computers which have been left in the alleys as garbage for pickup by the gabage men(or someone like myself). most of the time these computers are heavily infected with virii and spyware, which is probably the reason why the original owners just left them for dead. i hate seeing not-so-modern(and usually capable) equipment being dumped in favor of something brand-new-and-shiny just because the former owner was too stupid to know how to take care of their own tools, not to mention the environmental impact tossing electronics into a landfill.
i admit in the beginning i used to take a look at what data is left behind: sometimes a few dirty pictures, bookmarks with saved passwords, and all sorts of misc personal cruft. after the first couple salvages, i realized i didn't have time to be a datavoyeur, and i don't even bother looking anymore i just go right into rebuilt: boot off of CD, format drive and lay a fresh os(lately been ubuntu, osx for capable macs). i'll run it for a few days, exercise the harddrive using dd(or compile some app, or use some type of stress tester), make sure base household apps are available(ooo, browser, games) and either give it away or sell it at a garage sale.
why bother? there are plenty of less fortunate folks out there who still don't have a computer, and they're happy to get a working hand-me-down instead of having to go to the public library, school, etc. using open source software on older equipment is a nice way to be environmentally friendly, and socially responsible by helping the less fortunate become computer capable.
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so what can you do with your stock of misc old hard drives? tear apart and destroy the ones that don't have any usable life(i.e. full height 5.25" 12LB 9GB narrow SCSI Seagate, prolly a good candidate for destruction). take the usable drives(6-40GB are pretty common in my old hardrive pile), perform a mkfs, dd random data to the drive, and do a full install of your fav distro. next time someone ask you about linux, give them the drive that's preloaded. or slap it in an old machine that's getting donated or headed for the trash heap.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
Hook it up to one of those USB to IDE/SATA adapter cables (choose one of dozens available) and run IBM Secure Data Disposal (downloadable from the Lenovo or IBM support sites). It can do up to 7 times overwrite with random patterns, which isn't even recoverable by the RCMP or FBI. No guns, no bombs, no BS, just a clean drive you can now donate to someone who needs it.
Officially a geek since 1984
Go once a year on vacation to hawaii and throw your hard-drives into a lava flow....
Maybe you can hire the A-Team. I'd pay to see Mr. T bust down a door, grab a hard drive and yell, "I pity the drive!" and smash it.
Every time I have ripped open an old hard drive to get out the magnets I get a headache and feel nauseated, It seems to be a physical response to something in there. Any ideas why this could be?
I split wood for heating my home, so one tool which I have around is a wood grenade. I have very successfully destroyed hard drives by driving wood grenades into them with a sledgehammer. It's also a hell of a lot of fun.
Long distance. 50 or 100 yards is best with the rifle. Offhand they make a dandy little target but if your going to use a bench back them up to 200 yards. If handguns are your thing then try the 44mag or 45LC at 25yards. In any case I suspect that 3 or more rounds through the platters will make them hard to read.
Yeah, I know this is /. so this suggestion may not go over well...
But Windows Home Server has a neat filesystem that spans multiple drives, internal and external, and is a lot easier to configure than RAID. It also supports instantly adding and removing drives from the cluster. It's slick as heck.
Get yourself some inexpensive USB enclosures for those drives, a copy of WHS, and link them all together into a mega-volume.
It's the only way to be sure.
A blog about stuff.
My father was concerned about personal information remaining on a dead hard drive. I told him to take it apart and heat the platters in his fireplace past the Curie point. He kept the small residual deformed mass of metal to show me. I think that the substrate of the platters may have been aluminum, with a ferrous coating.
How about just erasing the drives and leaving them in the computer when they are donated. It would make the computer much more useful.
Shoot them full of holes.
We just bought one of these dongles for $19 at the IT/Software company I run, and it's easily the best $19 I've ever seen spent by anyone. We're using it exactly as you described.
-knewter
I use the magnets for sticking notes on the fridge. The platters are useful repair tools (they do break now and them, I have to replace them)
I use a bulk tape eraser. I take it out of the computer and magnetize the whole casing, then draw it back from the casing while on (per instructions). This eliminates all magnetic information on the platters, or at least makes it unreadable - mostly randomized.
Be careful with this though. I use it far away from any computer or disks!! Take the bulk tape eraser and the the hard drive to the garage and plug it in there. Zap, Zap, Zap!
These things are available all over the Internet. Look up "Bulk Tape Eraser"
It was not thát hard, was it?
I decommissioned an old Dec RAID-5 JBOD box, which used to house my websites, email, and database storage. I lost the special cable, so when it came time to read the old data from it, I had to take each drive out, connect it to a system, and dd each disk into a file. Boy was I pissed when I couldn't figure out how to get mdadm to read from a files instead of disks! So, I tried to set them up all together on a SCSI bus. When I didn't have enough cable, I went to two controllers, and I was able to sync-up, and tar the data.
Now the fun part. These were the old Seagate Baracuda drives. Big chunks of metal, like 10 or 11 platters, and 4.3 gigs apiece. I'm sure others have stories of older nastier drives, but these are horrible hot and loud little bricks. It gave me *great* pleasure to take them apart for their magnets. Each disk (of seven that I had) contained four of whatever kind of magnet, and they're very strong. Two shattered, and two had corners chipped from them. Otherwise that gave me enough magnets to play with for a while.
Don't put them on opposite sides of your finger webbing unless you're looking for a piercing.
Very true. Assembling eight of them into a circle requires a bit of practice, and it leaves your hands hurting for quite a while. Be careful with strong magnets like this. They are, however, great for the fridge -- if you get the magnetic sand from the shattered units off the unit. Otherwise, you'll scratch the fridge, or embed bits of magnetic splinters into your fingers.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
One of my goals at my previous company was to never end up embarrassed and on the news from data leakage. We had many engineers working on patentable ideas not to mention finance and general stuff not to be shown outside. I pulled ever HD from machine to be retired or sent outside the company in any way. I'd stack them until convenient to take to the corporate machine show to have them run the band-saw or drill press on them.
That would keep me out of the news, as only a handful of data recover specialists could recover anything from them. Due diligence was performed. If you need military grade destruction you need to shred the whole drive - someone already provided a youtube link.
Kevin
Irrational Diversions
Just DBAN the damn thing and pass it on to the next user. I'm sick of all of this 'I'm so precious' paranoia that's so common these days. Nobody cares about you-get over it.
Noo, noo, noo..
You just GOTTA keep those drives. Sounds like you're kinda "hard" up, hehehe.
Maybe you could go to one of those semi-active volcanos and just disk-cuss-throw them there. Just be sure you don't spin right round like a record and end up following those bits and bytes. Then, it won't be a matter of what or whom is Dead or Alive....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Why waste good drives?
Create a full device Truecrypt http://www.truecrypt.org/ volume on each, using the same long (20 chars of so) password for each that you will always remember, and redundantly backup stuff on them. Then put them in a drawer. The Truecrypt volume will completely fill the drive, every sector, so you've wiped the old data. And now you've got backups that no-one else can access, for free.
How to Say Goodbye to Old Hard Drives?
An ounce or two should be sufficient.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Clearly guns don't kill harddrives. People kill harddrives. Obviously this is a clear case for gun control.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Just hook the hard drive up to a USB device that you can connect IDE devices to. AcomData makes some very nice hybrid converters (you can swap out a hard drive and put, say, a DVD/CD-rom drive in it) at a reasonable price. It's all very much plug-and-play and it works quite well.
"How to say goodbye to old hard drives" is not a question, so the question mark is wrong. Seriously, stop murdering English.
Doing this is labor intensive. Ask me how I know. USB or Firewire enclosure. I doubt that the improved speed of Firewire will make much difference with older drives and USB is more common. For Windows I like Eraser from http://www.heidi.ie/eraser. It's FOSS and allows you to configure erasure patterns that suit your level or paranoia or you can use one of the supplied patterns which include two Uncle Sam mil spec standards. Each pass of pseudo random noise takes about a minute per gig on an ATA100 device. I have run several tests and verified the results using disk investigator.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm not affiliated with Okion in any way, but they do make an excellent device (if you can get hold of one) called a DriveWalker. Neater, for what you want to do, than a USB-IDE enclosure, because it's just the pluggable interface (and an extra power supply for the 3.5" disks) which you can get for ide, laptop ide and sata, normally with two of the aforementioned interfaces on one device. I've had to do a lot of testing / development of installation procedures for laptop drives, and this is how we do it -- for more than 8000 machines so far.
He was talking about destroying ostensibly dead drives, I think. Otherwise, there's no reason to question whether the salvager has a working drive of the same model to swap the platters into.
But, think this through. If anyone is likely to have a drive of the same model as the drive you're throwing out, who else than the salvager? And do salvagers ever have kids? Maybe even kids with a healthy curiosity?
"Mom, can I go dig in your dead drive bin?"
"Sure."
And the kid pulls two identical looking drives out.
"Cool. I wonder if they're both broken the same way. If I swap the platters, maybe I can get one working drive."
Long odds? Depends on whether the drive died at about the same time as a bunch of other drives of the same model as to whether the odds are long or short, but even if the odds are long, remember that a salvager tends to see a lot of drives, enough that long odds aren't so long.
Something that would be less unlikely, maybe your controller is not so great. Or maybe your power supply is a little unsteady with an older, power hungry drive. But the salvager probably keeps a few good controllers and power supplies for her own use. That drive that looks bad to you may well be readable when plugged into a different power supply and controller combination.
If your imagination still needs a little prompting, consider this. Your company has it's CA server in a locked closet, like it should. The drive apparently dies, but it was actually that the controller needed re-seating. The admin before you thinks a dead drive is no security threat and tosses it in the recycle bin. He gets transferred or traded or quits and you get moved into the job. You don't know what's in the bin, but he says on his way out, no, nothing in there is important.
So, for some reason, the salvager or his kid plugs that drive in and, lo and behold, they have your private keys. They're nice, and they call you up and tell you, but you still have to go to the trouble of invalidating and replacing those keys. And who knows what goes down before the keys are properly invalidated at all the clients?
Long odds, but not worth the risk. If the drive seems to be dead and you personally can't guarantee that the drive doesn't have that n% of data that is actually sensitive anywhere on it, behave responsibly and make sure the data is not readable. Bulk erasers by themselves can't be guaranteed to do the job so it's safer to use both electromagnetic and physical destruction techniques.
It's a bad idea to ever put sensitive data on hard drives, but until we solve the middleman problems and commonly have reliable stand-alone hardware tokens to hold the keys, and so forth, it's better to get into the habit of being safe.
Take the platters camping with you, toss them in the fire and crinkle the aluminum-foil leftovers before you leave.
I have used some of the magnets for various tasks like a retrieval tool, stud finder, paper holder, etc. Most magnets are in a randomly assembled pile on a self, it actually makes a really interesting piece of modern art. The screws, jumpers and such all hit a hardware bin, the aluminum hits the salvage bin. I have found several handy uses for the isolation bushings found on some drives. The nicest looking parts of all, the motors, spacers and platters I have not found a good general use for yet but I am working on it. Maybe another art project, or a lamp. I did use some of the platters as reflectors for a halogen track lighting system, made for a nice golden light, but they were a pain to match up to the fixtures. The platters do make a heck of a semaphore mirror, try one out in bright sunlight, please do not look into the focus cone with your remaining eye. If one could manage to evenly distort the platter a slight bit without breaking it they might make a heck of a parabolic cooker or fire starter. I keep wanting to play with using the motors as a mini generator but have not had the time to check out the feasibility of such.
wabi-sabi
matthew
They make a good metal source for casting small aluminum parts.
Suppose you have a bad sector somewhere. Will dd skip it and move on, or will it bail out?
Because if it bails out, everything beyond the bad sector doesn't get erased...
Why not give the disk to people who need them?
People in 3rd world countries have desperate need for technology like this, I bet your old 80 gb harddrive would be cherished like a gift from above with these people as they can't afford a computer on their own. Donate your disks and old hardware to charity groups that deals with huge amounts of these, these will be repaired and put to good use in the 3rd world countries. Even those who put these together to help out other poor people will learn a great deal about IT just by refurbishing these old things and giving it away to people who need them. It raises the bar for life quality in those countries...bringing them the goods we had but they could not afford - this helping them - helping themselves, thus requiring less aid from us in the future if they finally manage on their own!
This "trash stuff that are older than 2 years old" mentality is bringing me to the brink of insanity because I know how many who needs these things. Sure it's fun to blow up stuff...I like that as much as the next guy....but I'm not insane either - I care about this planet - I care about our resources - by donating your old IT to charity you are reducing the need for cheaper products to be produced and sold to 3rd world countries! Thus you are saving rainforest space and literally families around the world!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Thank you for posting the one useful comment that no one else (except for maybe the expensive Wiebetech one) has said.
However, there are less expensive versions of this that also include an SATA port and include a 1A 12v AC/DC adapter with IDE-to-SATA power adapter cable, on eBay.
no text
Before disposing of the drives it's also a good idea to sanitize the media. A good guide is NIST's SP 800-88 Revision 1 Guidelines for Media Sanitation which will give you more than enough detail on how to securely dispose of those drives.
I've taken a few appart lately and now have a wonderfull set of 6 3,5" aluminum coasters. I still have to find some 5mm thick felt to stick to one side with doulbe sided carpeting tape. :-)
Stick felt to one side, carefully cut away the overlap and the hole with a scalpel or something. Voila! Luxury coasters. You could ask 15$ each in a designer furniture store for those.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
credit card numbers, passwords, bank account numbers, ...
You may have clean on-line habits, I may have clean on-line habits. There are an awful lot of people around who don't.
That one percent of data is a killer.
And, by the way, some of us don't hand our credit card to waitresses, etc., although the point is somewhat valid. Agreements the employer makes don't always filter down to the staff. But there may be no agreement at all with the recycler. Even if there is some law requiring recyclers to treat personal data with the same circumspection as, say, large amounts of cash found in discarded make-up cases (a real case where I live), it's harder to trace the recycler.
But, no, the hypothesis about the computer-wiz kid is not far-fetched. I pick up drives from unknown sources. My son is one junior-high (middle school) course away from being able to take a hard drive apart and put it back together. I've worked for companies that take on the disposal of customers' old machines, and I've seen hard drives of the some model come from two different sources, and I might work for such companies again before my son either loses his interest in computers or leaves the nest.
That a particular circumstance sounds worse than the plot of a really bad movie proves nothing about the probability of it actually occurring.