OT! Destroying old hard drives and backup tapes Options

[swl]

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.

[Qarl]

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.

[mikelsr]

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

[cooltimes]

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

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

[Part Pricer]

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.

[Brian Mifsud]

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!

[tat2dphreak]

2 words: GUN RANGE

[Rockaria]

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.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer.gif)

[mikelsr]

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

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

[machina]

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. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smash.gif)

[bigkensteele]

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.

[bigkensteele]

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

http://da.harborfreight.com/cpisearch/web/...w&Submit=Go

[mharrison]

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.
These Guys offer a secure shipping service as well as shredding the drives.

(IMG:http://www.semshred.com/stuff/contentmgr/files/1fa40d4e151e0485a1d8f9147a81ff38/full/harddrive_destruction_big.jpg)

With financial data it is acceptable to do a DOD overwrite. We use this:
Darik's Boot and Nuke
This wipes it to government DOD specs.

As for the pain of hooking these up, this 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

[GWN7]

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.

Do you have a BBQ?

Fire it up and "bake" them. An hour at 450F should take care of them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/jsharp.gif)

[computers4kids]

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

[smontanaro]

Band saw with a metal blade?

S

[fiid]

Here is the bastard answer (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

"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.

[seanery]

I think the chopsaw fits Qarl's situation best : (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sawzall-smiley.gif) :

[John]

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.......

[914forme]

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.

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. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ar15.gif)