how to destroy a hard drive?
 

I want to throw away a broken laptop, but I'm a bit afraid that perhaps someone could by chance take it from the dump and remove the hard drive, and possible access some personal information from it. I know that im paranoid, and the odds of that happening are super small. Can you like magnitize it or something, or do i just need to rip into the laptop and take out the hard drive and shred it. Thanks in advance, its not like there is anything super important on the machine, but it might have some bank/tax info on it.

Thermite the bastard!

You are pretty paranoid about someone finding your porn.

I just saw a news report on this sort of thing the other day. They were talking about the "recycling" of computers and comp. parts to third world countries. They also mentioned how they were able to take some hard drives at random that had been reformatted/wiped and were able to retrieve
almost everything on them - including government documents.

They said that there were programs that were able to do this properly or they said the only safe method was with a hammer ( which they proceeded to demonstrate in true television news style - in case anyone needed a visual clue instead of the spoken word ).

Could also try putting the hard drive in a large container filled with acid.

I'm thinking the hammer method is more readily accessable, more affordable and fun!

Something I have always wondered. You can wipe the hard drive clean, but all the info can still be retrieved. Yet when you have a problem and lose a file that you desterately need there is nothing that can be done...

I think that's because, as I understand it, when you wipe a hard drive, all you're really doing is "de-linking" access to the files stored on it. Sorta like how you can change your radio presets, but that doesn't nuke the radio stations.

The reason it can be recovered is because it hasn't been destroyed. When you delete a file, you're really just deleting the pointer that references it.

When you have a hard drive problem, however, you may be dealing with corrupt clusters - and the important file you desperately need may be stored in one of those corrupt clusters.

Sackattack is right, when you delete info, you're not really deleting it but the references to it. To fully delete a disk you need to format it, write data on it up to fill it again, and repeat that process over and over. I have read that even formating a harddisk 10 times, some info can still be retrieved. The hammer won't fail, but don't break only the engine but also the disk itself (it looks like a metal disk into the hard disk case. Else the disk inside can be used with another lector to retrieve the info.

microwave? (saw this in a movie)

And, according to the MythBusters metal does not hurt a microwave. Cool light show, but no damage done to the microwave.

Really? To me the acid approach would be hella fun.

It's called writing zeroes to the drive. You have to fill it with blank data. I did this once now, but can't remember how. Google "writing zeroes" or something.

Get a big magnet. Actually the best way, is to physically destroy the drive. Where I work, we do this to any drives we cannot format automatically. I believe they drill a large hole in the drive.

I saw a movie called Office Space once.. You may have heard of it, but either way, there is a scene in there I really enjoyed. I say go to the park with a sledgehammer, a boombox, an NWA cd, and your laptop.

Better yet, take a Peter Gabriel CD instead of the NWA.

Oh, yeah.. and film the whole thing and post it with an NSFW link.

Hmm, i didnt realize for 4 dollars i could get a converter so that i could hook it up as a slave in my normal machine. Now that i think about it, i may just put it in the main machine.

damn.

Destroy! KILL! KILL! KILL!

Hammer would have been my guess.

Ohh, or a jackhammer. Or maybe scantily clad women with jackhammers!

(google Bennie Benassi)

There are a few free programs out on the net that will do the reformat/write/reformat thing that will get rid of the data as best as you probably can (without physcially destroying it, which is fun!) I had to do this at work when we got rid of like two dozen computers. There are also programs that cost money that would probably work a lot better too,b ut as most of said, the best way would be to just open it up and have your way with it...

take the HD apart, remove the platters and procede to bend and scratch the bejeezus out of them. Then, take metal shears and cut the platters into tiny pieces.

you are a glorious man. a manly man man. your heterosexuality is mighty. thanks for the tip. that's now my favorite video of all time.

You should be able to take it apart... Once you break the vacuum seal the harddrive is pretty worthless. Just to be sure you could then take a sledhammer or something to the platters. If you really want to be sure you'd melt it in acid, but that's not really reccomended unless you work for the miltary or a three letter government agency. :)

If you can pull the harddrive out and hook it to another computer you can use the Department of Defense disk wipe utility... it basically writes the same pattern over all the bits on the disk. Run it 7 times and you can be pretty confident the original data is gone. Still a good idea to physically destroy it though.

poop on it. nobody will touch the thing.

when I worked at the Pentagon, IT would swap out hard drives every time a computer was assigned to a new user.

They would take the hard drive outside and beat the crap out of it with a rubber mallet.

Acid does'nt work.I have an old HD i need to destroy.....And i used acid.....Damn it F'ed me up real good...i was hitting on an elephant in a pink tutu in my family room for 3 hours.When i became lucid again my HD was still working and i had a trombone up my ass.

I can't believe I'm the only one in favor of thermiting the sucker. NAPALM IT DAMN IT!

Are you sure you should be giving out such information?

Don't be surprised if you hear Dick Cheney on your party line...

Well, all of these computers were for unclassified info.......and I have no idea what else IT might have done to them.

Plus Mr. Cheney is still tied up looking for WMD's in the Middle East :p