UKC

I'm probably going to be buying a new pc processor today and am wondering about the best way of rendering the old hard drive "un-hackable". Maybe a sledge-hammer or angle grinder.

Grateful for (sensible) suggestions.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Sledgehammer/angle grinder will do it. Basically you need to make sure the platters in the drive are in lots of small pieces.

Or ideally, if you have a *really* strong magnet, that'll do it.

In reply to mattrm:

Many of them are plastic platters these days, particularly 1.8 and 2.5" laptop drives. Unscrew the top of the drive, remove the platters, put in a plastic bag and smash up (or use a CD shredder).

Neil

In reply to FesteringSore:

Overwrite the entire disk at least once. The entire disk, not just entire partitions on it (a Linux livecd and dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda might do).

This is good enough for ~99% of the world.

For the remaining 1%:

- Do the above multiple times (how many times? Depends who you ask)

- You'll have to physically destroy both the platters and the controller board. The platters, despite the above, may still contain data that doesn't get overwritten due to transparent mapping out of bad blocks by the controller. The controller may have significant amounts of memory (~2-64mb). Your grinder will work, a sledge hammer could work but it'll be a lot of work. Melting the platters (they may even burn, some are plastic) would be interesting.

In reply to needvert:

use something like eraser on one of the more serious settings.

Then take a grinder/hammer etc to it just for fun.

In reply to FesteringSore:
Exactly which world leaders telephone conversations are on the drive?

In reply to FesteringSore:
Well it really depends on what is on the drive:

1) You are an ordinary person and don't have a drive full of stolen state secrets, copies of Jihad for dummies or naughty pictures of kids.

Just do a quick pass with something like DBAN or Eraser.

2) You used to work in childrens TV.

Do several passes with DBAN.

3) You are currently living on a fake passport after MOSSAD attempted to kill you.

Take the drive out of the PC, remove the main PCB and pulverise the largest chip with a hammer. Take the hard drive platters and either ball mill them or drop them into a bucket of aqua regia. Failing that then Thermite does wonders.

To the best of my knowledge despite it being theoretically possible to recover data from a multiply overwritten hard drive it has never been publicly demonstrated. Once you remove the platters from a drive it is unreadable by anyone without a lot of very fancy kit as the precise alignment of the hard drive heads with the platters is critical to getting good data out.

I'd do something fun or useful with them: They make good bird scarers for the veg patch or they acceptable clay targets if any of your friends shoot

In reply to althesin:
I was thinking exactly the same.

Just smack it a few times with a lump hammer a few times until it rattles and the terminals are well mashed then sling it in the bin.

The average crim isn't going to spend loads trying to rebuild the drive to steal the precious secrets of any random punter.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Bury it deep in the earth for future generations to uncover your crimes and kinks.

In reply to FesteringSore: Got me wondering what is on there that the drive needs to be so utterly destroyed

In reply to FesteringSore: Just chuck it in the sea. Or bury it under your patio.

In reply to FesteringSore: install windows vista on it

In reply to FesteringSore:

For most people it should be adequate to zero out the drive and bung it on ebay. If you have lots of private information and/or commercially sensitive stuff then there will be rules about what you do.

If you don't have the above, but are still paranoid, then modern (since about 2002) hard disk drives have a built-in low-level command that causes the controller to wipe the whole disk. It is called ATA Secure Erase. You need special software to trigger it, which can be a bit awkward, but it is very effective. Probably more-so than breaking the platters into coin sized bits, but both will put your data out of the reach of anyone except possibly GCHQ/NSA and friends.

When you say you are buying a new processor, I assume you mean a new tower. A processor does not normally come with a new hard drive?

In reply to FesteringSore: When i have to dispose of hdd's with commercial data (software code usually) I just burn them in a very hot fire - i've examined the remains of a couple of them and the platters have either turned to dust or they have delaminated and warped - either way the magnetic surface was totally destroyed.

In reply to FesteringSore: Give it to Blanchie - he doesn't care what porn you've been looking at.

In reply to Submit to Gravity: Sorry, Wilkie )))

In reply to Submit to Gravity: it's true, I've seen it all before

In reply to FesteringSore: Take the unit to your local computer expert and they will clean the system and give you a certificate as guarantee. Should cost about £20.

In reply to Sean_J:

There's no room...that's why he wants to wipe it...

In reply to FesteringSore:

Question, does leaving it in the bath [under water] work? Thanks.

In reply to mattrm:

Interesting misconception.

We took a few drives and put them in a super-conductive magnet (amazing machine) and left them in there for 30 minutes and it made zero difference. Then we had it turn on and off a few times, and where able to recover 97% of the data (but one of them was dropped so that could account for the 3%). Turns out magnets are very ineffective.

Best thing we found was an industrial grinder. Blow torch kind of work, but we were able to recover fragments of data, enough to build 3/4 of a picture. Also used a blowtorch to get a drive spinning again.

A reasonable method that is also fun for your average home user, connect it to a power supply to it is spinning and hit it a few times with a big hammer. They don't like that very much either.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Wow, hard drives are tough. They should make tanks out of them.

I put mine in a crucible with 1kg of glass frit and melt it at 1200 °C, let it cool and discard.

In reply to FesteringSore: Just had an idea. What about target practice with a 12 bore at shortish range? Might do it.

In reply to FesteringSore:

I've been thinking about this all day, and I have to ask, but if you are buying a new processor then why do you have to kill the hard drive?

In reply to FesteringSore:

Will it blend?

youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko&

In reply to FesteringSore: The best way to avoid anyone finding anything on your harddrive is not to publicly post about how to destroy it.

Then put on a black polo-neck and one of those ribbed black hats, put the disc in a hessian sack with a brick and nonchalantly throw it over a bridge. Smoking a cigarette and looking casual obviously. Make sure someones watching you from the shadows and play some appropriate theme music for added effect.

In reply to FesteringSore: . youtube.com/watch?v=cOHCksyk8hc&

In reply to FesteringSore:

I'll add to the several comments about why buying a new CPU renders your hard drive unusable, but hey ho.

Even using some seriously heavy bits of kit, hard drives are surprisingly robust. Personally I use a method which is partly finesse (take it apart using screws there for the purpose) and partly brute force and ignorance (clobbering the then-exposed platters with an axe or similar).

The actual case forms really, really good protection for the platters, and I found in my early days that even after really enthusiastic abuse with a selection of blunt instruments, when the case eventually came apart the actual platters were in perfect nick, and someone with a clean room could probably have recovered the data.

In reply to The Lemming:

Probably too much cheese pizza.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Take it apart. Give the bits to the council to bury in one of their landfill sites, one piece at a time if you're paranoid.

Or have you really got something to hide?

In reply to John_Hat:

Sorry, in my ignorance I don't understand how getting a new processor renders the old one "unhackable".

Can you elaborate please?

In reply to JoshOvki:

I have - at an old job - degaussed disks and the data was 100% not recoverable. When the machine died they replaced it with a shredder that was far more satisfying to use.

In reply to FesteringSore:

How about posting it to yourself using Parcelforce. You are guaranteed no one will ever see it again...

In reply to Nic:
Nice one.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Sorry, in my ignorance I don't understand how getting a new processor renders the old one "unhackable".
Can you elaborate please?

I think people are saying, why not keep the hard drive and use it with the new processor?

In reply to MJ:

Because it seems to be the hard drive that is causing me a lot of problems. It's over eight years old, very slow and misbehaving.

In reply to FesteringSore:

Disconnect your hardrive and put it on a shelf. Unhackable.

In reply to ericinbristol:

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/t-72_rd15_2.jpg
See those boxy looking things? Hard drives

I wiped my old ones, then drilled through the case into the platter and took then to the electronics section of the tip. Quick, environmentally friendly (ish)), and makes the drive unreadable to almost everyone. I did snap one drill bit per drive though-the platter soon and the bit caught.

*spun