Destroying hard drives

[Moses Yoder]

I recycled two old computers last year in the spring. I removed the hard drives and set them on a large window sill. Yesterday I was moving an electric fence where the wires for the fence go through that window and saw the drives still setting there. I did a google search on how to disable hard drive and found this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdutB7XfyRk

[Ole Anderson]

Thanks for sharing.

[Curt Harms]

Those things have really good magnets in 'em. By the time I get through harvesting the magnets the platters look about like pretzels. I figure they're disabled.:)

[Chuck Wintle]

yes always good to destroy a hard drive so nothing is retrievable by anyone except perhaps the NSA with all their resources available to them. The government uses a wipe process that does a low level, bit by bit, read/write process 7 times. at this point the data is not retrievable. Too many drives are sent back under warranty for replacement in which the customer has made no attempt to erase the info. Samsung, Seagate and WD sell these returned drives by the pound at auctions. Kinda scary to think how much info gets out there.

[Bill Cunningham]

just scrapped half a doz. You rip em apart and salvage the magnets. As curt says, they have really good ones. But be careful, some ate strong enough to give you a bloodblister if you get the tip of your finger caught between two of them, or even one given the right condition.

[Phil Thien]

yes always good to destroy a hard drive so nothing is retrievable by anyone except perhaps the NSA with all their resources available to them. The government uses a wipe process that does a low level, bit by bit, read/write process 7 times. at this point the data is not retrievable. Too many drives are sent back under warranty for replacement in which the customer has made no attempt to erase the info. Samsung, Seagate and WD sell these returned drives by the pound at auctions. Kinda scary to think how much info gets out there.

I'm pretty certain that is incorrect. If they do sell materials as scrap, the drives are rendered unrecoverable first.

[Chuck Wintle]

I'm pretty certain that is incorrect. If they do sell materials as scrap, the drives are rendered unrecoverable first.

sorry but there is anecdotal evidence of at least one person recovering date from a defective hard drive that was sold at an auction. he recovered a persons data and phoned him to let him know that. :D

[Phil Thien]

If you want to destroy a drive, just drill a 1/4" hole up from the bottom of the drive into the cavity (where the platters are located). Once you drill through the aluminum bottom into the cavity, your drill bit will be stopped by one of the platters.

The contamination to the cavity and the gouge you put in the platter will make the drive unrecoverable. Fast and effective.

[Phil Thien]

sorry but there is anecdotal evidence of at least one person recovering date from a defective hard drive that was sold at an auction. he recovered a persons data and phoned him to let him know that. :D

You're going to have to post a reference to something saying as much, otherwise it is just urban legend.

[Rich Engelhardt]

sorry but there is anecdotal evidence of at least one person recovering date from a defective hard drive that was sold at an auction. he recovered a persons data and phoned him to let him know that. :DIIRC - the hard drive was from a copier/printer that used the drive to spool print jobs.
I believe - but - I'll have to dig around to see for sure - the information recovered was Chelsea Clinton's phone number or SS number.


Ok - I gave it a cursory look and couldn't find it.


It's been a number of years since the event happened.

CBS ran a special about it in 2010, but, the report I;m thinking of was years prior to that.

The drive in the copier/printer wasn't defective IIRC. The machine had been turned in on a lease and the drive inside still had all the information on it.
Someone wrote a program to read the information off the drive and came up with all sorts of stuff.

[John McClanahan]

A couple of good whacks with a hammer will do the trick. The slightest bend in the platter will ruin it.

John

[Keith Outten]

All you need is a couple small Torx drivers to take apart computer hard drives. Salvaging the internal goodies starts with the magnets, then the platter or platters and finally the motors which can be used for any number of projects. The case is normally cast aluminum which goes to the scrap bin to be sold at the end of the year at the recycling center.

I have at least 50 motors and a hundred platters in my shop from a recent salvage. The magnets are used everywhere, check out my Shop Hanger thread for just one idea.

Large SCSI Drives with 6 to 12 platters have very powerful magnets that are a 1/4" thick and these should be handled with care AND kept away from children.
.

[Leo Graywacz]

Sticking it in the MW might destroy some of the electronics but the platters are shielded and the MW energy won't even reach them. Smashing it with a hammer until you see the disc and then breaking them to pcs is the best way to destroy the data.

[Myk Rian]

I take them apart and keep the magnets and discs.
Scrap value after you wipe the magnets all over the discs.

[Chuck Wintle]

You're going to have to post a reference to something saying as much, otherwise it is just urban legend.

Urban legend should be enough for the story to be believable? :D Sorry but i cannot fine the link as it was several years ago when i read the story. :(

[Tom Stenzel]

I've mentioned it before but the Hewlett Packard XP box I have was picked up from the curb. Everything, the box, monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse. It wouldn't boot, turned out the problem was the CPU fan was jammed with dog or cat hair. The BIOS on the motherboard sensed the fan was stopped and prevented the boot-up. Cleaning everything up, it worked.

As you would imagine, ALL the data was still on the hard drive. Everything. Kids homework, POP account email, everything. I erased it all. Well, almost. I kept some of the music I found. The previous owner was a Dead Kennedys fan so I kept that.

When I first got it to run, I left it running in the garage to see if any other problems would pop up. My daughter, about 10 years old at the time, wandered in the garage. She came out a few minutes later and said, "Dad, there's a naked lady riding a dragon on the computer!". That's when I knew that "cleaning up the computer" would involve more than compressed air and some cleaning solution! Ouch! 4 years later I'm still using this old box. The only thing that has been replaced is the mouse. One of the buttons went bad on the old one.

Incidentally, if you're giving away an old Windows computer to someone else and want to clean up the hard drive, log in using your usual admin account and delete all the other user accounts. Then create a NEW admin account and use that to delete the old admin account. That will dump the hidden data in the users directory.

That's assuming the recipient just needs a computer and plans to use it, not spend hours and $$$ to see if they can recover data off the drive.

-Tom

[Lee Schierer]

Sticking it in the MW might destroy some of the electronics but the platters are shielded and the MW energy won't even reach them. Smashing it with a hammer until you see the disc and then breaking them to pcs is the best way to destroy the data.

I have no way to test this, but I tend to agree that the microwaves will never reach the discs and I'm not sure the salt water will even get inside the hard drive. I'm sure the exposed circuits are pretty much toast from the microwave, but a competent technician could remove the discs and reinstall them in an operable drive and still recover teh data.

You can destroy data on a CD or DVD in the microwave, but they aren't shielded by an aluminum case.

[paul cottingham]

I use software that formats and then writes random data all over the drive 7 times. As far as I'm concerned the data is unrecoverable after that. I once bought a 10 lot of computers from a gov't surplus sale. Shockingly, the drives had only been formatted, so recovering data off them was trivial. Fortunately, one of my ex students was working for the agency in question, once I got word to him, they started 7 wiping the drives.
Of course, you could open the drive, and shred the platters, which is the only way to truly destroy a drive. Even a smashed plater could be theoretically recovered. But honestly, worrying about a drive properly 7 wiped probably means you watch too much CSI or NCIS.

[Brian Brown]

If you are not looking to recover the magnets, It seems to me that 80-100 rounds from a 9mm or .357 would make any data difficult to recover. The drives are great for target practice. :D

[Rich Riddle]

I drill them in many, many places. When the drilling is done it looks like swiss cheese. You can't restore that no matter what you do.

[Michael Weber]

This reminds me of a few years back when a former governor of Arkansas left office. He Paid a company to do the total erase thing of all the computers his administration had used. Then he paid another company to remove the hard drives and had them melted down. Always wondered what he was so bent on hiding.

[Art Mann]

Putting the drive in a bag of salty water will have no effect on the actual disks. It is necessary for the case to be hermetically sealed because the read mechanism is extremely sensitive to contamination.

[John McClanahan]

The area of the platters has a small vent hole with a filter to allow pressure to equalize when the drive warms up and cools off. If the hole was left in the up position the salt water may gradually flood the platters.

Hard drives run anywhere from 4,500 rpm up to 10,000 rpm, some even more. The read/write heads hover over the surface without touching it. This hover is measured in millionths of an inch. If the heads drag, the heads and platter surface will be damaged. Particles of the disk will be scattered on the disk and cause further damage. Thats why a bent disk is as good as destroyed, as the heads can't maintain a hover if the platter surface isn't flat.

John

[Curt Harms]

If I wanted to be pretty confident any data on a spinning hard drive was unrecoverable but wanted to reuse the drive, I'd probably use this:

https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

From what I've read this wipes/overwrites everything, including portions of a hard drive that most disk wiping software ignores.

[Dave Sheldrake]

All mine go in the metal shredder at work.

cheers

Dave

[Mike Olson]

I used to recover data from dead hard drives at work. I also destroyed sensitive information on hard drives.

If you want to ensure nothing can be read from a drive you need to do a couple things.

1. Take off the circuit board from the bottom of the drive, break it up and throw it away a few weeks before. Without knowing what circuit board or even firmware version it will be VERY difficult to recover data. "I had stacks of old working hard drives that I would swap the boards with dead HDD's to get them working again, but I had to match the brand, model, and firmware versions"

2. Take apart the HDD using some small torque screwdrivers. you can remove the platters, then take some pliers and bend them up. "Warning, if they are a silver/black color then they can shatter like glass, but these are usually only found in OLD server drives"

3. keep the Magnets for projects.

[Jason Roehl]

I suspect that if you have the platters out, a little scuffing of the surfaces with some fine sandpaper would do the trick. If you're worried about what dust might be generated, hand-sand both sides of any platters you have, wearing nitrile gloves, and do it in a trash bag. Have everything in the bag to start, do the deed, then just drop everything in the bag, including the gloves and pitch the whole lot.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

You're going to have to post a reference to something saying as much, otherwise it is just urban legend.

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/02/09/1525212/ask-slashdot-how-to-deal-with-refurbed-drives-with-customer-data

http://www.geeksalive.com/one_year_ago_ha.html

I vaguely remember seeing things related to this a few times, and once or twice it was related to refurbished drives. It is one of the reasons that I encrypt my drives; if a drive fails, i can sent it in for warranty replacement without worrying about data leakage of this sort.

[Pat Barry]

a hundred platters in my shop from a recent salvage.
Why are you keeping the platters? Send them to the landfill

[Phil Thien]

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/02/09/1525212/ask-slashdot-how-to-deal-with-refurbed-drives-with-customer-data

http://www.geeksalive.com/one_year_ago_ha.html

I vaguely remember seeing things related to this a few times, and once or twice it was related to refurbished drives. It is one of the reasons that I encrypt my drives; if a drive fails, i can sent it in for warranty replacement without worrying about data leakage of this sort.

Neither of those involve drives returned to a drive manufacturer. Yes, resellers have shipped product that was returned by another customer, with customer data. Drive manufacturers don't.

The drive manufacturers will remanufacture drives, but part of that process typically involves defeating heads/platters (thereby reducing capacity) because there is a bad head (for example). Or rewriting bad firmware. Or whatever. But part of the process is the drive's media is tested, which involves erasure.

[Jim Rimmer]

There are a lot of good comments here about different ways to destroy your hard drive but I am also curious about the longstanding admonition to not put metal objects in a microwave. What gives? He obviously did and I didn't see any sparks.

[Mike Olson]

There are a lot of good comments here about different ways to destroy your hard drive but I am also curious about the longstanding admonition to not put metal objects in a microwave. What gives? He obviously did and I didn't see any sparks.
My new microwave actually states in the instruction manual that metal containers can be used in the microwave as long as they do not come in
contact with the walls or celing. I had a bad experience as a kid forgetting to take aluminum foil off something before heating it so I won't do it even if it says it's OK.

[ray hampton]

metal can be put into a microwave oven IF you use the correct SIZE of metal, I heat water for tea in a cup of water , teabags contain a steel stapler, small pieces of foil will cause the food to brown IF PLACE in the correct place

[Dan Hintz]

Metal within a microwave oven is not generally a problem if: 1) The item to be heated is not fully enclosed by the metal, and 2) there are no sharp points to build up a static charge large enough to ionize the air around it (read, spark)

[Kevin Bourque]

The 12 gauge erasure method never fails. No need for bags of salty water either.

[Harry Hagan]

The 12 gauge erasure method never fails. No need for bags of salty water either.

My Remington 870 Tactical does a very thorough job.

[Rick Gibson]

I just take mine apart, salvage the magnets and run the magnets over the disks. After being hit with the magnetic field from the magnets in the drive there is no way there is going to be any readable data on them. I'll sometimes scratch the surface of the disk with a knife and then they go into separate trash bags and off to landfill.

[Jim Rimmer]

Metal within a microwave oven is not generally a problem if: 1) The item to be heated is not fully enclosed by the metal, and 2) there are no sharp points to build up a static charge large enough to ionize the air around it (read, spark)

I just learned the hard way (via LOML) that the warning about running the oven with nothing in it could be fatal to the oven. She thought she had pressed timer to cook a roast in the regular oven for an hour but pressed cook instead. It cooked, all right. :(

[Dan Hintz]

I just learned the hard way (via LOML) that the warning about running the oven with nothing in it could be fatal to the oven. She thought she had pressed timer to cook a roast in the regular oven for an hour but pressed cook instead. It cooked, all right. :(

Yep, that's why you can't completely cover your meal in foil... without something to absorb the radiation, it eventually gets reflected back to the magnetron. When that happens, the heat has to dissipate there, and the magnetron isn't designed to do that... things go bye bye.

[Garth Almgren]

A couple of good whacks with a hammer will do the trick. The slightest bend in the platter will ruin it.
Speaking as a trained digital forensics examiner, I'd agree that a hammer is the best. The platters in modern hard drives are often made of glass or ceramics, and once they're shattered, there is no putting them back together. Not even the NSA could get the magnetic fields to line up just right to get any usable data off a shattered platter. Even with older aluminum platters, you're right that any bend in the platter will cause a head crash which will destroy any data the head comes in contact with.
For a less (physically) destructive method, use a multi-pass overwriting eraser program like Eraser (http://eraser.heidi.ie/). Realistically once the bits have been overwritten 3 times, even someone with access to a scanning electron microscope would be hard pressed to get any meaningful data off the drive.

[Greg Portland]

At work we drop the HDD in one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp8sFsriH4c

[Leo Graywacz]

Pretty sure there will be no data recovery there.

[Dave Sheldrake]

That's where mine all go Greg, I had one left from the days of the engineering shop so kept it :)

cheers

Dave

[paul cottingham]

Even better than 7 wipe, 7 wipe the drive then install Linux on it. Clean drive, brand new operating system!:D

btw I believe Eraser and 7wipe are functionally the same. They may even be the same application.

[Myk Rian]

An IT buddy says to take the discs out of them, and run the faces of them across a belt sander.