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So I have these hard drives...

We're The Great Old Ones Now

17:09 / 04.02.05

So I recycled a bunch of computer stuff. It all goes through Camden's refurbishment scheme and I hope ends up in some school or library doing more use than under my desk gather a truly phenomenal amount of dust and causing me to stub my toe.

Being as I am a total paranoid, and more rationally as how I make my living from my stealable ideas, I took the hard drives out before I gave up the stuff. So, yeah, I fear they'll probably be more your spare parts than your actual ready-to-go project. But hey. They're in reasonably nick apart from that.

The thing is, now I have the same problem only a bit easier to store. What in the hell do I do with four hard drives to make 'em safe to throw away? Hit them with a hammer? Boil them? I'm not putting them in a microwave and in any case I don't own one. I figure I should get a magnet, but how strong a magnet do I need to erase them thoroughly?

Any and all hints appreciated.

w1rebaby

17:19 / 04.02.05

There are a number of freeware secure delete programs out there that will wipe hard drives to military secure standards. If you donate any more systems that way it is probably best to use those and leave them with the drives.

You could hook the drives up to another machine and use one of those, but unless the NSA are after you, opening them up, taking out the discs themselves and breaking them into little pieces should be okay.

lekvar

18:10 / 04.02.05

The computer recycling center I used to volunteer for had a degausser, essentially a huge magnet. For a fee you could have your HD securely erased (completely fries every bit of electronics, from the data on the disk to the ROM that allowst the device to interface with a computer) or you could make the mistake of trusting that no-one would go on a "data archaeology" expedition through your personal files.

The people who volunteer at these places love to go spelunking.

Your paranoia is well founded. Find somewhere that can securely delete the files on your drives and then recycle them. Or, alternately, buy some torx screwdrivers and take them apart. The platters are lovely and quite small, like little golden CDs. Mind that you don't get fingerprints on them.

NotBlue

18:15 / 04.02.05

I take it as a fine upstanding 'lither that the need for true deletion is potential embarassment rather than swat crashing thru yer door, so....

DirectorySnoop has one for overwriting specific files.

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0%2Cfid%2C22920%2C00.asp

and

http://www.jetico.com/ with BCWipe link folowage should be good.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

22:37 / 04.02.05

Yeah, well. The drives are as well-wiped as I could manage with my level of ability and software. In other words, there's probably nothing on them that anyone not engaged in a somewhat insane level of nosy inquiry would ever retrieve. My task really is to make the drives sort of boring to try to read. So probably the best thing is to take a hammer to them. That way, sure, you could put them back together and get them working up to a point, if you were engaged in some kinda James Bond shit, but really it's no fun.

Triplets

23:15 / 04.02.05

Break the HD disk and keep a couple of the fragments for a month or two. Then chuck said fragments?

Triplets

23:17 / 04.02.05

*forwards thread URL to Interpol*

Grey Area

07:44 / 05.02.05

I've found that drilling holes into the drives is a very satisfying way of ensuring that the drives are useless. Open them up, clamp the platter into a vice and let rip.Failing that just open them up and apply a wire brush.

w1rebaby

20:03 / 05.02.05

There was something on that program on Sky where they do crowd-pleasing science stuff about disabling removable storage units... the one that really worked properly was putting them in a metal box with some explosives, and setting off the explosives. You could try that.

Didn't entirely erase the USB key they tried it with though.

sleazenation

22:04 / 05.02.05

If it's really so hard to destroy data can we have some links and things on how to recoverit from drives are long past saving through trditional means?

w1rebaby

22:07 / 05.02.05

It takes labs and stuff. Not really within the means of the casual snoop.

gravitybitch

01:57 / 06.02.05

I'd also vote for taking them apart.

It's fun. And the parts are pretty in sort of a modern art sculpture way. And, there are some nifty strong magnets in the drives themselves - will hold really big&heavy calendars on the 'fridge just fine (and some burningman types use them to assemble structures)...

(And, yeah, breaking or scratching the disks will do a great job of making them pretty unreadable.)

Ender

07:45 / 06.02.05

There really is no issue here. Get a hammer and smash the shit out of those old drives!

nedrichards is confused

13:05 / 06.02.05

personally I second the 'fuck of magnet' solution mentioned earlier but if that's not available. drop them in acid. then drill holes in them. and hit them till they break. then throw the parts into different bins. in different countries.

'military secure delete' stuff is bollocks. Whilst it's a first step towards data sanitisation you'd be amazed what you can do with a magnet. OS X and Linux should have nice write over everything a bazllion times with a bazillion random naumbers software built in which do exactly the same thing and have the bonus of being free.

Triplets

14:08 / 06.02.05

Just rub fridgemagnet all over them.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

12:01 / 07.02.05

I supopse the magnets from the drives themselves would make apt erasers...

w1rebaby

23:02 / 09.02.05

OS X and Linux should have nice write over everything a bazllion times with a bazillion random naumbers software built in which do exactly the same thing and have the bonus of being free

They do. Well, depending on your distro, you might have to download it. Fink will get you it for OS X.

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