Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Destroy Hard Drives? 1016
First time accepted submitter THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER writes "I have 10-15 old hard drives I want to trash, some IDE and some SATA. Even if I still had IDE hardware, I don't want to wait several weeks to run DBAN on all of them. I could use a degausser, but they are prohibitively expensive. I could send them to a data destruction firm, but can they be trusted? What's the fastest, cheapest DIY solution?"
Unscrew them, separate components, dispose (Score:2, Interesting)
I did it today to one. Unscrew them, take the plates, throw them in different recycling bins/garbage cans/whatever. If you're concerned about someone snooping in your garbage, drop one off at a different gas station every morning. Plus you get some neat looking polished Al/Ni discs out of it if you don't feel like throwing them away...12 year old drive's guts were shinier than a bathroom mirror today
Only one way to be sure. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This attitude makes me sick and I'm tired of it (Score:2, Interesting)
^ This.
Modern ATA drives (post 2001-ish) have secure erase which includes erasing damaged sectors which would otherwise be skipped over.
Number of overwrites needed [wikipedia.org]
This is one of the laziest posts I have seen yet on Slashdot. wtf people use the internet it's faster than waiting for slashdotters to use the internet for you.
Re:This attitude makes me sick and I'm tired of it (Score:5, Interesting)
http://hostjury.com/blog/view/195/the-great-zero-challenge-remains-unaccepted [hostjury.com]
http://www.anti-forensics.com/disk-wiping-one-pass-is-enough-part-2-this-time-with-screenshots [anti-forensics.com]
(Key quotes: Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory by Peter Gutmann (35 pass wipe originated from Mr. Gutmann)
âoeAny modern drive will most likely be a hopeless task, what with ultra-high densities and use of perpendicular recording I donâ(TM)t see how MFM would even get a usable image, and then the use of EPRML will mean that even if you could magically transfer some sort of image into a file, the ability to decode that to recover the original data would be quite challenging.â)
(Article itself) http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html [auckland.ac.nz]
Re:oven (Score:4, Interesting)
Well....
I had a friend who's drive was killed in a lightning strike. A friend of theirs swapped out the control board for another one. It physically fit, but released its magic smoke after just a few seconds. So, I inherited someone elses botched repair. Of course, I was 1,000 miles away, so it's not like I just stopped by to say "hi", and took a look at it. :)
I did some digging, and found a guy who would send you the appropriate replacement board for something like $40. It would help to have the original board, but he figured out which board was correct for this drive, and it took a whopping 5 minutes to install. Most of that was finding the screws and screw driver. :)
The only way to assure a drive is completely unrecoverable is physical destruction. Simple as that.
Amusing when "corrections" are wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
A "not always right" mod may apply because not all of them are glass, but I never said they were but I suppose somebody attempting to read too much between the lines could assume I meant that with "It's glass in those drives". Maybe I should have written "a hell of a lot of drives have glass in them" but somebody that's never looked inside or read anything about their manufacture or never found some other way to get the merest fucking clue would probably still "correct" me before finding that even Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_platter) is a good enough source!
What I don't know however is if it's haematite or magnetite on the surface of those platters since I've never stuck one under a microscope - anybody here know? It's obviously an oxide since fingerprints on the polished surface don't corrode and fingerprints on polished steel (and ferrite) corrode quickly enough that you can almost see it happening.
Re:oven (Score:4, Interesting)
If you don't want to get into pyrotechnics but you have firearms: A .308 will do the trick.
This. My boss at my old IT job used to go out to a firing range with one of the server guys on their lunch break and shoot old drives with a bunch of different guns. It makes a pretty awesome looking exit wound.
Volcano (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in Greece we have some volcanos that are easily accessible by the public and in fact some schools go there regularly. Last time I heard children went to either to the island of Nisyros or Santorini. There are plenty of holes to the ground that lava is visible. You can drop your hard drive there. Don't breath over the holes, I heard they smell terribly of brimstone. Don't fall inside. PS: Santorini is a great island to go to the summer, so perhaps you can combine those two activities.