Disposing of old computers and tablets

[Dave Zellers]

My guess on drilled holes is that they might trash the the read /write heads when the heads go over the hole, drop, and then collide with the other side of hole, but the data on the rest of the disk stays.

Regarding encryption, there was a problem with XP encryption because of an issue with it's random number generator if i recall correctly. I saw a demo of were the encryption vulnerability was exploited, I think it took about took about 10 lines of code. The point being, what's adequate encryption today might not be tomorrow.

I thought the heads floated microscopically (OMG I just spelled that correctly!) above the disc. But I'm curious about the hole theory too.

Re your other point, absolutely today's encryption won't be tomorrow's, and let's not even think about the processing power / speed of the future.

[Curt Harms]

You guys must all have state secrets on your PCs if you feel the need to physically destroy computer storage. There is plenty of free software that can wipe drives to a level good enough to not need to physically destroy storage media. You could install Linux and overwrite the entire drive with zeros or other characters.

Not for nothing is dd called disk destroyer, huh?

[Keegan Shields]

Conventional hard drives with spinning platters are assembled in a clean room to exclude dust and other contaminants. Start drilling holes in things and it causes problems. While it’s not impossible to recover data from, it greatly increases the effort, skill, and equipment required.

Simply erasing or overwriting your drive doesn’t work very well because the overwritten bits (the 1s and 0s) don’t line up perfectly. Software can be used to recover some or all of the previously overwritten data.

Should you be worried about this? It’s up to you obviously. IMO, drill a hole in your hard drive through the spinning platter and you’ll be fine. The NSA has tons of public resources if you are worried about information security.

If I was looking to gather PII to use in scams or sell online, ewaste drop off sites would be a good start.

[Alan Lightstone]

I've been in the drilling holes, camp. It also helps that I have RAID 6 arrays on my drives, so far more difficult, if even possible, to reconstruct data on individual ones. I bin them on separate weeks, sometimes in separate locations.

I've also plugged them into wall sockets, used strong magnets.

Never thought of an axe. The hole drilling seems to shatter the discs.

Paranoid? I think not, sadly.

[Alan Rutherford]

A few years ago I boought several hard disks in a thrift shop for $1 each. All the data was intact.

I once cleaned up the disk on a computer I had bought off Craigslist, decided not to keep, and wanted to give away in working condition. Even though it had nothing of mine on it, I used software that over-wrote all the empty space on the disk, which otherwise would have everything that had been deleted. It took time to delete stuff, clean things up and install the wiping software. Then the software ran for about 5 hours. My time is worth more than the disks.

The value of the axe is that it opens the disk up to let the water or whatever in, more easily (and more satisfyingly) than drilling holes.

[Alan Rutherford]

Not the prettiest work I've ever done but....
IMG_2088r.jpg IMG_2089r.jpg

I switched to the hatchet when I got tired of drilling holes.

[Keegan Shields]

The goal of drilling is to drill through the platter (spinning disks) inside, not just puncture the outside.

Although at this point, we are probably splitting hairs. There are other less damaged drives to collect for the criminally minded.

[Alan Rutherford]

The goal of drilling is to drill through the platter (spinning disks) inside, not just puncture the outside.

Although at this point, we are probably splitting hairs. There are other less damaged drives to collect for the criminally minded.

Speaking for myself, the goal was to get liquid inside to destroy the entire surface of the disk. There would be a lot of usable data on a disk with a hole in it for someone who wanted to go to the trouble. As a practical matter, my disks went inside bags of garbage to the landfill. If anyone ever sees them again, it will be a future archeologist.

You're right about splitting hairs. There is no subject that cannot be dissected to death here but I learn a lot.

[Brian Elfert]

No criminal is going to go to the time and expense of trying to recover data from a drilled drive unless they know with certainty there is a treasure trove of data on the drive. Nobody's personal drive is worth that level of work and expense unless you're a celebrity or something. Criminals can spend their time more productively trying to break into various online sites to steal database full of useful information. I find it hard to imagine criminals digging through hard drives of unknown origin just to maybe find a SSN or other useful information. A simple format in Windows would stop 99.99% of criminals from doing anything further.

A number of laptops now have the SSD soldered onto the motherboard. Are you going to destroy a laptop with a soldered SSD instead of that laptop having a second life with someone else?

[Mike Henderson]

I did some work on encryption during my working life. The goal was to make it more expensive to break the encryption than the data is worth.

Mike

[mike stenson]

Speaking for myself, the goal was to get liquid inside to destroy the entire surface of the disk.

Unless you're using a corrosive liquid, it's not going to do anything to the metal disk.

[Brian Elfert]

My father worked for a defense contractor before he retired in 2009. Everything was still spinning disks then. Every computer hardware support contract they had was written that broken hard drives would not be returned to the vendor. They eventually bought an expensive hard disk destruction device that had a very strong magnet to destroy the disks.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I took the hard drive out of our last computer and have it in an external hard drive case. I will do the same with the current one. It refuses to function well ever since I foolishly followed Microsofts prompts and put windows 11 on the windows 10 machine. It is nice to have nothing to hide and not a whole lot of great value to worry about. All of the family photos are my biggest concern.

[Mike Soaper]

"I thought the heads floated microscopically (OMG I just spelled that correctly!) above the disc. But I'm curious about the hole theory too."

Dave, Yeah, my understanding also is that the heads normally don't touch the disks but are very close. Given that the platters are spinning at 5k? 10k 15k rpm I suspect some air currents go over and under the head, creating some air pressure between the head and the disk. Given how close the head is to the platter my guess is that when the head goes over the hole there's less pressure to keep the head up so it drops a bit, maybe enough to hit the other side of the hole or any burr created when the hole was drilled. but that's speculation on my part.

BTW back in the day there was high capacity floppy disk system called a Bernoulli box, base on the Bernoulli effect which caused the floppy disk to lift up close but not touch the read write head.

[Jack Frederick]

“Microscopically.” I am constantly amazed at the intellectual level(s) freely offered here. I am a Neanderthal in the truest sense of that word, without the finer skills that section of the site offers. I pulled the drives, beat the hell out of them and soaked them in a bit of mineral spirits I was disposing of. Anyone who makes an effort to get anything meaningful or useful will be so very disappointed. Much obliged for your help.