Throwing old hard drives

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bradleyh10

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Jul 21, 2008
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Hi,

If i was throwing out old hard drive, what is the best thing to do so that no one could access them if they found them?

Cheers Bradley
 
The absolute best thing is an industrial shredder. But as those are pricey, you can use a destruction service that will send you a report saying the drive was destroyed. The report satisfies auditors if you're in a business environment. Still on the physical destruction path, you can open up the drive and use sandpaper or similar to destroy the coating on each of the platters. Or take it to the firing range & open up with your favorite shotgun.

What most do, though, is use software to erase the drive's contents. Search for something that does a DoD Wipe (DoD=Dept. of Defense). This process does multiple passes over the drive with each pass writing different bit patterns. The result is a drive whose contents cannot be read or determined by analysis of the residual magnetic fields.

If you have a need to wipe a number of drives, there are appliances that will do the wipe for you and again, produce auditor-friendly reports.

The advantage to the DoD and appliance wipes is that the drives can be re-used.
 
You could try to take the platters to a grinder. I haven't done this, but I'm pretty sure it would work. Might take awhile though.
 
Mercutio said:
I've been paid to take a sledgehammer to drives.
They even gave me the hammer.
Click to expand...

I do this on a regular basis. Not often enough to my liking though. I use an axe most of the time instead of a sledgehammer. So far, I've never had problem being paid by the customer after I've finish a data erase job, so I guess they are satisfied.
 
I take a hammer, and make sure that the case is well dented so that anyone looking at the drive has no doubt that it is trashed.
 
There are commercial hard drive shredding outfits that you can send drives to, or they may pick up at your location in the larger cities. Best of all, you will receive a certificate that lists the description and serial number of the destroyed drive(s). :)
 
LunarMist said:
There are commercial hard drive shredding outfits that you can send drives to, or they may pick up at your location in the larger cities. Best of all, you will receive a certificate that lists the description and serial number of the destroyed drive(s). :)
Click to expand...

Can't do it. If I or my client are worried enough to physically destroy the drive instead of just formatting it, it will be destroyed by one of us in front of both of us.
 
It comes down to whether or not you need to be able to prove you destroyed the drive's contents or the drive itself. LM's and my posts come from the POV that you need to be able to provide evidence that the data or drive was destroyed. Someone witnessing you smashing the drive is fine but in general won't pass an audit or investigation.
 
Fushigi said:
It comes down to whether or not you need to be able to prove you destroyed the drive's contents or the drive itself. LM's and my posts come from the POV that you need to be able to provide evidence that the data or drive was destroyed. Someone witnessing you smashing the drive is fine but in general won't pass an audit or investigation.
Click to expand...
I guess that depends on who it's for.
For the govt. it's generally fine.
 
I haven't seen it in writing but I have been told we are supposed to gring the hard drive into small pieces. Then we are to ingest the the pieces. If we don't, the IT Gestapo will show up and manually insert the pieces into our digestive track. This is to ensure the pieces go to the sewage treatment plant and the company doesn't have to pay for trash removal of the pieces. :thumbleft:

Bozo :joker:
 
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