Getting rid of a hard drive

At my workplace we generally just run Darik's Boot & Nuke. But I admit that the "shredder" is very cool. And there's a certain appeal to putting in a small shooting gallery back behind the Help Desk.

http://lifehacker.com/5154818/hard-drive-disposal-with-extreme-prejudice

Cool. I hate trying to destroy them. I mannually have removed three from desk tops and then took them apart and tried to cut them, burn them, bend them back and forth til they broke, all without success, and eventually just threw them in the trash. It would take a lot of work to physically put them back in order to read unless you were really determined. But I am sure it could be done.

DBAN works wonders. It's the best utility for this out there that's available to the general public.

If you really want to cause damage, take them apart and grind the platters with sandpaper.

mbpark;535645 wrote:

DBAN works wonders. It's the best utility for this out there that's available to the general public.

If you really want to cause damage, take them apart and grind the platters with sandpaper.

Never thought of that one! Hell I tried everything else. I even considered taking them over to the guy in EOD and letting them put a little det cord on them or maybe some c-4 for grins.

metal grinder, added to list.

Drop them from a very tall building? Most platters won't stand more than a few g's.

Pie;535672 wrote:

Drop them from a very tall building? Most platters won't stand more than a few g's.

Disk drives in the days of IBM PC-AT were rated at 6 g's. Todays disk drives are rated in the vicinity of 40 g's.

.44 mag

Like I said, the belt sander works best :). They can recover data from hard drives from laptops from crashed airplanes.

1/4 inch diamond carbide drill bits.
Holes spaced 1/2 inch apart.

Or:

Thermite.

Or:

Drill one hole, fill with sulphuric acid CAREFULLY!!!

Or:

A ball mill, if you have access to one.

Or:

Place hard drive on wood block, balanced on edge.
Use MONSTER MAUL™.

Why not just melt it?

Thermite will melt it.

or you can file off the bearing it works the best from what I have seen.

make them into wind chimes

Use a torx t10 bit to open the outer case.

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Shred it, baby!!1

And then they will dump the scrap and the lead and heavy metals in the circuit boards will leach into our groundwater. :(

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If one reformats will there still be data on it?

Not unless you do a low level format with DBAN or grind down the platters.

mbpark;537664 wrote:

[COLOR="DarkRed"]Yes,[/COLOR] unless you do a low level format with DBAN or grind down the platters.

Fixed it.