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Posted by: Qarl Aug 2 2006, 09:17 PM

I literally have about 4 dozen old hard drives (between 6 and 10 gigabytes each) and about 60 old backup tapes that I need to secure lyerase and destroy.

Can I go to my local surplus store and get a mega magnet (like the one you would retrieve crap off of the bottom of a lake using a rope) and demagnetize and erase them?

They have medical information on them and I need to render the drives usesless and unreadable.

I do not want to sit there for 6 hours witha sledge hammer and I don't have enough drill bits to drill through the platters?

Will a heavy duty magnet work?

What are my other options.

Posted by: r_towle Aug 2 2006, 09:22 PM

the only sure way (DOD approved) is to destroy the platters themselves..

If you dont want to take them apart and break the platters, there are companies that do this as part of the business.

Ask around, look in the yellow pages..they used to just come with portable shredders, now I think they have heavy duty ones for things like hard drives..and you can watch to sign off on the job.

If you cant find one, contact a local defense contractor...ask the IT guys..or the head of Security...its there job to destroy the stuff, so they know who the companies are..
Rich

Posted by: cha914 Aug 2 2006, 09:23 PM

plasma cutter? a drill press would make pretty good work of them also, just need one hole all the way through and you are pretty much done.

We have a electromagnet machine at work that we use to erase tapes and hard drives, might check with a local university to see if they have something similar you can use.

Or go to a highschool and challenge the kids to see who can destroy their harddrive the fastest!

Good luck,

Tony

Posted by: iamchappy Aug 2 2006, 09:39 PM

Sledge hammer

Target practice!v

I know you have plenty of ammo and weapons, good time to true up your scopes.

Posted by: Joe Sharp Aug 2 2006, 10:00 PM

Carl: You need to build a small mound of dirt and next to it in the hole where it came from, place the drives and use your triger fringer to put the holes in them.
:PERMAGRIN: Joe

Posted by: Gint Aug 2 2006, 10:15 PM

Ever pointed that Mosin Nagant at a hard drive? Give it a whirl. I had a blast (literally) last time.

Posted by: anthony Aug 2 2006, 10:21 PM

Sounds like about 10 minutes of work.

One hit per tape and two hits per drive should do it.

Posted by: swl Aug 2 2006, 10:23 PM

There are firms that will do it for a price. I'm also seeing the computer recycling industry starting to emerge. They grind electronic components into sawdust and then separate the different components - it is an evironmental thing. They aren't in the data security business but once a drive goes through their shredder even the spooks couldn't put it back together.

Tapes are a bit different. We used to use a vibrating electromagnet to erase backup tapes. I think though with enough time and effort though someone could read it - just not with a normal drive. Writing a stream of 1s and 0s is a cheap and effective way of deleting as well. Going low tech - I bet they would burn well.

Posted by: iamchappy Aug 2 2006, 10:27 PM

You could burn the tapes. Shoot up the rest.

Posted by: GWN7 Aug 2 2006, 10:29 PM

If you don't want to shoot them, a bonfire works too. Roast some marshmellos and toss the drives in.

Posted by: trekkor Aug 2 2006, 10:36 PM

5 gallon bucket, water and muriatic acid.


KT

Posted by: GWN7 Aug 2 2006, 10:49 PM

seeing Miles is MIA........stuff them in chickens and feed them to gators

Posted by: elwood-914 Aug 2 2006, 11:09 PM

whoa...wait........how much nekid stuff ya got on there......maybe a great gift to Miles to get him off the goat kick

Posted by: rick 918-S Aug 2 2006, 11:16 PM

http://www.lwgconsulting.com/locations/index.html

Try these guys. They have a location in Orlando. They are defense contract secure data recovery experts. I've used them for Insurance claims. If they can recover it, they can destroy it too.

Posted by: swood Aug 3 2006, 12:06 AM

I say first you shoot them.
Then you burn them.
Then you drown them.
Then you hang them.

Then you hammer them.

And lastly, you insult them.

Posted by: So.Cal.914 Aug 3 2006, 12:13 AM

A degauser would probably work (magnet) but if you had a cutting torch or

know someone that does it would make short order of those tapes and harddrives.

Posted by: sj914 Aug 3 2006, 02:00 AM

Take them to skeet range and have some fun shooting them to bits.

Posted by: balljoint Aug 3 2006, 05:58 AM

Hmmmm, do you know any Hobbits?

Posted by: mikelsr Aug 3 2006, 06:23 AM

On the serious side, if you want to securely erase a disk there are established procedures and specifications for doing so. Our company used to produce such a product but since there are so many free ones out there we dropped it. As I remember it, we overwrote the data a minimum of 7 or more times with certain types of data. We would then truncate the file to prevent anyone from seeing what the size of the file was. We would also allow you to erase an entire disk using the same algorithm. You may ask why 7 times and the answer is that the residual magnetism from past writes can be detected with the correct gear.

Do a google search for file shredder and then search for one that meets the DoD/military or other standards.

Once this is done, get a big f***ing hammer and have fun! Or put them in front of a dragster and have them do a burn on over the top of them!

Mike

Posted by: ken914 Aug 3 2006, 06:28 AM

I think Norton Utilities makes a program to do this. Basically it just erases the files, then creates random noise files to fill the entire disc. The erases and repeats 7 or 8 times. Gets all those little electrons screwed up so they don't remember where they came from.

Check on-line. We have a copy of it here in the office and use it for the exact same purpose.

Posted by: swl Aug 3 2006, 06:48 AM

If you are going to the bother of reinstalling it in a puter the I suspect that formatting the drive is probably good enough for privacy issues.

Posted by: Qarl Aug 3 2006, 07:26 AM

Seriously folks... I can't reinstall 4 dozen hard drives in a PC and run a program to write data on them 7 times... that would take a week!

Sounds good in principle, put unless you want to come here and sit in fromt of a PC and play geek for a week, it's not going to happen.

I need something simple and fast.

My rifle club won't allow me to shoot at a hard drive since it is too dense and the chance of ricochet is too high.

Don't have a torch or plasma cutter.

Don't have enough drill bits or a drill press... (read my first posst)

Sledge hammer will fry my back.

Best advice so far has been to find a service.

Posted by: mikelsr Aug 3 2006, 07:32 AM

Then get a strong tape degausser and run it all over the drives in all directions. Radio shack used to carry one.

Posted by: cooltimes Aug 3 2006, 07:50 AM

Use a spare power supply and hook connections in ass backwards. Should fry em good.

Posted by: Part Pricer Aug 3 2006, 08:00 AM

Qarl,

I understand what you are trying to do. However, if you need to be 100% sure that the information on those drives is not available or compromised in any way, there are things that you need to do.


First, never let those drives out of your sight or direct control. If you hand them over to someone for disposal or demolition you can never be 100% sure that either all of the drives were actually destroyed or if they were not somehow accessed before being disposed of. With this said, I hope you realize that you will need to devote some time to this.

Second, they need to be destroyed. That is the only way you can be sure that they will never be accessed again.

Go to a local machine shop with your box of drives. Give the guy there $300 cash to drill holes through the platters while you hand them to him one at a time. Rebox the drives and then dispose of them in an environmentally safe
fashion.

Posted by: Brian Mifsud Aug 3 2006, 08:02 AM

Karl,

Send 'em to Davey Jones Locker.... Orlando looks to be a 40 mile drive max to your friendly neighborhood OCEAN! If you don't have a boat, nor a friend so equipped, just buy yourself a ticket on a fishing party boat. Take the drives aboard in a back pack "your lunch".. and slip them overboard when noones lookin (tell 'em your leaning over the rail cause your gonna yack..the'll leave you alone)....

Sledge hammer is the second best. I simply chucked mine up in my bench vise. One blow with a 5 pounder and the drive's chassis is nuked. If you are lying to us, and have very very very comprimising data on those drives (Karls offshore gambling habits?).. you'll want to give each drive 2 Whacks, so you actually BREAK the platters inside....

of course, if the data is REALLY REALLY REALLY bad for your reputation (your former porn site?), you'd better dissolve those platters in flame or acid!

Posted by: tat2dphreak Aug 3 2006, 08:08 AM

2 words: GUN RANGE

Posted by: Rockaria Aug 3 2006, 08:16 AM

Hard drives come apart really easy. I take the platters out of mine and take them to a machine shop to have them cut in half. Then I bend the halves. Simple easy and if you can get the data off any of them after that - Power to you!

Simple and quick. Some shops can actually cut the whole drive in half if they have the right setup, but I like to seperate the platters from the drive case and electronics.

Posted by: mikelsr Aug 3 2006, 09:05 AM

Karl,
Since they have medical information on them you may have legal requirements as to how to destroy them. As mentioned earlier, there are places that will come by, sign for and pick up the drives, and then shred them.

Good luck and let us know which way you went (for future use by some of us).

Mike

Posted by: synthesisdv Aug 3 2006, 09:31 AM

i killed 6 old drives with a 20lb sledge hammer.

one good blow and those things are gone.

48 drives is a bit of work but not out of the realm of possibility, its good excercise.

Posted by: bigkensteele Aug 3 2006, 10:22 AM

Harbor Freight has a 14" metal chop saw on sale for $49 + another $10 for some blades. I just bought one to cut the wrought iron railing that I am installing on my deck. I assure you that it will slice through a harddrive in very short order. Cut the things in half, quarters, or like a pie if you want. Easy, cheap, and possible fun, depending on your idea of fun.

Posted by: bigkensteele Aug 3 2006, 10:24 AM

Ok, so it is $69 right now if you don't want to wait for a sale.

http://da.harborfreight.com/cpisearch/web/search.do?keyword=chopsaw&Submit=Go

Posted by: mharrison Aug 3 2006, 10:44 AM

I'm a Data Security Officer with a mid-size national bank.
A degausser or magnet will not make the data unrecoverable.

If you're not confortable physically destroying the platters yourself you can contact a service. With a good written contract you can limit your liability.
http://www.semshred.com/content291.html offer a secure shipping service as well as shredding the drives.



With financial data it is acceptable to do a DOD overwrite. We use this:
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
This wipes it to government DOD specs.

As for the pain of hooking these up, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=USB2IDE-N&cpc=SCH will let you connect the drives externally to a USB port for $8.50
You would probably have to use a different utility than the Darik's Boot and Nuke as this wouldn't be accessible from DOS.

Hope this helps. Good luck!
-Matt

Posted by: GWN7 Aug 3 2006, 10:45 AM

Do you have a BBQ?

Fire it up and "bake" them. An hour at 450F should take care of them.

Posted by: computers4kids Aug 3 2006, 10:51 AM

In my experience, the only sure way to secure the data on old hard drives is to use them as jack stands under a 914--It's safe, and insures decades of protection!
LOL



Attached image(s)

Posted by: smontanaro Aug 3 2006, 10:55 AM

Band saw with a metal blade?

S

Posted by: fiid Aug 3 2006, 10:56 AM

Here is the bastard answer

"Secure Erase" doesn't adequately specify what you want to do. Like all security, there is no actual final security - just security which makes it sufficiently difficult to recover the data that noone bothers.

You could easily do a big-magnet erase and a couple of bullet holes and it would probably do the trick, depending on how sensitive the data is - but it will still be possible (at great expense and time) to recover some of the data.

It's not as sexy, but there is software that will go over a disk writing random data multiple times, which is probably one of the better options out there. You could do the firearms thing afterwards if you need to get your macho on.

As for the tapes - burning them is probably pretty good - or just melting them down.

Food for thought.

Posted by: seanery Aug 3 2006, 11:01 AM

I think the chopsaw fits Qarl's situation best : :

Posted by: JOHNMAN Aug 3 2006, 11:13 AM

If you don't mind being an a-hole, you could rent a wood chipper and chip them up yourself. Just don't tell them what you really used the chipper for.

You could just send them all to me, I could put them in a bonfire, or they would make a hell of an MP3 array.......

Posted by: 914forme Aug 3 2006, 02:04 PM

We use a nail gun designed to shut nails into concrete. We trash 1000s of computers this way. You don't even have to remove the drive from the case, you just drive them through the bottom, and into the drive. They don't work ever again. But then it also

All most as much fun as shooting them with an armor piercing round.

Posted by: maf914 Aug 3 2006, 02:51 PM

If you can arrange an atmospheric nuclear device detonation the resulting EMP (electro magnetic pulse) will wipe those discs and tapes clean. Of course it will do the same to every electronic component in the south-east.

PS: This scenario was used in a book I read recently, The Talbot Odyssey, by Nelson Demille.