An anonymous reader writes "I'm wondering if anyone else out there has a stack of old hard drives sitting around and doesn't know what to do with them. I always remove the hard drives of my parents' and friends' computers before they recycle them or get a new computer, so now I've got a whole bunch sitting around. One, I'd like to dispose of them and know that whatever data was there is gone, but before that, I'd like to hook them up, one by one, and scan them to make sure there's nothing vital there worth saving. Some are years old and may be totally dead for all I know, but is there a good system for hooking up a hard drive as an additional device, perhaps via USB? And what's a pretty good way to ensure that someone else won't pull them out later on and find usable data?" Well to start with you could always use your hard drives to make electricity or create a decorative wind chime. There are also many different options to ensure that your data doesn't fall into the hands of the enemy. What other suggestions can folks come up with?
All you need to do with the platters is hit them with the sledgehammer a few times. The interesting thing is the rare earth magnets inside... you can have all sorts of fun with those puppies. Don't put them on opposite sides of your finger webbing unless you're looking for a piercing.
No longer are the rare-earth magnets in hard drives that powerful. In the past year I've disassembled many laptop and desktop hard drives (I turn the platters into throwing stars) and the magnets aren't very strong at all, nor are they as large as they used to be. They barely even phase CRT monitors, even when placed flat against the very back of the electron beam emitter.
I used to use the sledgehammer method, until i found a more fun way.
Mix 1 part aluminium oxide to 2 parts iron oxide, put in a hard disk sized container, and place on a stack a disks. Shove a sparkler in the top of the mixture, light, and run:D instant glob of metal on the ground! Yay for thermite!
I think you mean 1 part aluminium powder with 2 parts iron oxide.
The aluminium takes the oxygen from the iron oxide, releasing the sigificant amount of energy and leaving the unoxidised iron. If the aluminium was already oxidised, this would not happen.
Otherwise, yes - excellent idea. I even have a broken HDD I need to wipe, thanks!
To thoroughly degauss a platter, you need to expose it to an 'AC' magnetic source
An induction furnace is an AC magnetic source that works paticularly well:)
Once it's above the curie temperature it is not magnetic anymore and the magnetic domains are going to be arranged differently as it cools. A bit higher in temperature and any grain boundaries that may happen to have coincided with magnetic domains (I'm sure I read something about some correlation once) will be gone as well as the crystal structure co
It's simpler than that - "dd if=/dev/dsp of=/dev/hd bs=1024" and leave it until you start getting write errors.
Yup, that's right, folks, overwriting all the data on a hard drive just *once* puts it beyond the reach of anyone without extremely specialised equipment. For most modernish (made in the last 10 years) drives, then this will utterly destroy any previous data that gets overwritten.
No, the NSA do not have some magic machine that can read hard disks no matter how many times they've been over-written. You watch too much CSI.
No, there isn't a special secret command that manufacturers put in that show you what a sector used to hold before it was overwritten.
There's no guarantee that you'll hit every possible sector - some drives have metadata on tracks not normally accessible by the end user, and there are always mapped-out bad blocks that might still have old data on them. But seriously, no-one cares about your data enough to spend a fortune with a data recovery firm just to get your bookmarks and mp3s.
Just formatting the drive won't do it. YOu *do* need to hit every sector. It takes a while, and the electric drill method is quicker. It does leave you with a ruined drive, though, when it might otherwise have been useful.
If you don't believe that a single pass will clobber the data, try me. I'll give you an overwritten drive, and if you can tell me what was on it previously I'll give you a car.
At work, its well known that all past warranty dead drives go to me, as well as ones that work but are too slow and small to be useful. And I make sure the drive in question is definitely wiped:)
For the curious, it usually takes a hot 357 magnum to penetrate and clear most modern drives. 9mm and 45acp either bounce off, or don't exit the drive.
A drill bit is cheaper and easier. It also avoids those awkward ricochets and overshoots that put holes in people. This makes it difficult for all but the most determined people to read.
Dropping it in salt water is a sure way to destroy the data but this takes longer.
As for buried date treasure, don't bother. If you did not find it when you put the drive down and have not missed it, you don't need it.
put holes in people. This makes it difficult for all but the most determined people to read.
Yes, putting holes in people makes it difficult for them to read, if your aim is good, but I think the poster wanted a way to make the hard drive unreadable by anyone, not just by the people it was convenient to put holes in.
I take a different approach.. I'm the resident hard drive collector as well, except I take them apart and extract the magnets. The older they are the better, drives from the late 90's seem to have the best ones. Modern desktop drives have pussy magnets.:( Seagate 73 gig fiber channel disks have the best magnets I've ever pulled.
Of course, the hard part is doing something productive with them. They're really not good for much, except for marveling how cool magnetism is. Eddy currents are a good crowd pleaser.. made a pendulum type device with a led wired up to a coil, as it swung past a magnet the led would flicker.
The magnets are excellent for opening rental and library DVD cases...
They also work wonderfully on those annoying "inventory control" dye-pack
tags that clerks all too frequently seem to "forget" to remove from your new
shirt. Just stick the magnet at the end, you'll hear or feel a subtle click,
and the metal pin will pop right out (it should do so easily - If you
feel resistance, you don't have it right and will make a mess if you pull
too hard).
You can also use them to deactivate the strips in books and CDs that trigger
door alarms (but NOT the RFID ones, which look like a 1.5x1.5" sticker with a
slightly thicker center and spiral around the outer edge).
But remember what the signs always say, these devices exist "for your protection".
Not just for laughs from having some minimum-wage-slave frisk you at the door while
everyone looks at you like a thief because another minimum-wage-slave
couldn't bother to do their job and pass your purchase over the magic pad-o'-deactivation.
I look at any files worth keeping and copy these to another modern HD. Since HD space is cheap these days, I have several complete DOS drive images on file. After that I let the computer do a multi-pass full data scramble erasure. This can take quite a while on big drives.
After the magnets are extracted, the left over pieces go to a metal recycler. The cases are usually made from many beer cans worth of aluminum.
The problem with DBAN is that the drive has to be functional. Great for when you're selling hardware, but not so great when you're trying to destroy data on an otherwise worthless drive.
Sledgehammers are fun, but I prefer taking a grinder to the platters.
which erases on the ATA command level. To my knowledge, this will zap data that DBAN misses, because DBAN can't access the hard disk's sector relocation tables (sectors that were about to go bad, so were remapped), and this low level utility is able to.
DBAN plus this utility should be OK for most things, however as always if the drive had relatively sensitive data on it, don't give it away, and destroy it physically (lots of creative methods. For drives I want to be sure that are decommissioned, I personally pull the platters apart, run over them with a vehicle, then chuck each platter in a separate garbage bin.)
This [cyberguys.com] is a handy thing for temporarily hooking an IDE or SATA drive up to a USB port for a quick salvage job. (I'm just a satisfied customer.)
As far as disposal: open up the drives, take out the platters and use them for decorations or melt them, salvage the armature magnets for your refrigerator, recycle the metal.
Good stuff. I routinely use a similar adapter for data recovery on failing drives. The concept seems to work just fine. The same Vantec unit is also available from Newegg, but far cheaper. [newegg.com]
Or, if one is feeling adventurous and/or wants lots of these adapters without going going broke, there's always Ebay [tinyurl.com], via which I've always had fantastic good luck ordering insanely inexpensive electronics like this directly from Hong Kong.
So far, importing things from Hong Kong only takes about as long to get here (Ohio)
Glass platters look just like aluminum ones. It's hard to tell the difference until they break. When they do break, zillions of ultra-sharp slivers of glass go flying everywhere. It's way worse than breaking typical glass.
For glass platters, remove the screws holding them to the spindle, replace the cover and spin up the drive. There should be enough torque that the platters will remain stationary while the spindle gets to full speed, at which point you tilt the drive, the platters catch the spindle and they explode, internally.
they work, they're simple, when closed they're virtually indestructible, when open, you can swap drives in seconds, hot-swapped and everything. IDE and SATA. I've used multiple brands, they're all the same. Some have a power switch if you care.
If the drives are IDE/ATA/SATA, this [newertech.com] works well and is a better idea than rotating them through an enclosure. (I find that the captive cables in USB drive enclosures are not very robust. This does not share that problem.)
Rip them open, pull the platters out one by one, and make a high definition mirror, knowing every time you look at yourself you're doing it on several levels.
Hit the drives hard with a decent size hammer, a couple of times on each side, just so that anyone can plainly see that the drives are toast and totally useless as computer parts.
After the smashing, just toss 'em in a bucket. When the bucket fills up, take it down to your friendly neighborhood scrap yard. If you're lucky, they'll pay a "dirty aluminum" rate for it. If you're unlucky, they'll pay a miscellaneous scrap rate, which will be considerably lower (around a nickel per pound, here).
Or if you're really adventurous/thrifty, you can break them down into their different constituent metals (keep it simple and just sort into piles of aluminum, zinc, magnetic steel, and nonmagnetic stainless), which will maximize the amount of cash you'll be paid.
Honestly: Nobody wants to invest the time, effort, money, and energy into trying to scavenge data from a physically broken hard drive at the bottom of a scrap hopper without knowing, in advance, what is contained therein.
But if you're really paranoid, you can always yank the platters and melt them into little aluminum ingots first. It just doesn't seem worth the effort for household data . . .
In any event, you can be sure that the drives will, at some point, be recycled into something new.
25 ml of gasoline and a camping stove, that would be _more_ than enough. Just because the iron-platinum compounds used in modern HDs have a very high curie-temperature doesnt mean that the tiny magnetic domains dont become superparamagnetic at a few 100C at most. Otherwise, just erase them. All this "we can real deleted files because of remanent magnetisation" is _CRAP_ . This was possible 15 years ago, when servos were misaligning over time. And may 10 years ago, when bits were still sized in um. Nowadays, the
I used to work at a nonprofit agency that took (among other things) computers that were then handed out to community centers, senior centers, churches, etc. People were always donating computers sans hard drives because they didn't want anyone to steal their info. So the warehouse had literally hundreds of unusable computers. PLEASE use the commercial or free open source package of your choice to wipe the thing then donate it! Nonprofits that deal in second hand computers are in dire need of spare hard drives of even modest capacity. And no, the lady who wants to print up the church newsletter is not some 133t h4x0r who is going to recover the wiped data and steal your identity.
This is a personal problem.
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable use of high explosives. This is not one of those exceptions.
Prop the HD up with a tooth pick. Put a piece of cheese right next to the toothpick. If you use one of the really old heavy as fuck HDs, you'll be having mouse pizza for breakfast.
I took one out last week with a horizontal saw with a fine pitch blade for cutting hard metal.
I sawed directly through the middle of the platter, cutting through the motor. It made a very neat cutaway study. Might make some art with it, dunno. It was also fun to watch.
not for security, although you could, say, scour the platters with sandpaper if that's your concern.
I take them apart to admire the incredible workmanship that goes into them; the mirror polished platters and the wonderfully light head mechanisms that float so incredibly close over them.
Hard disks may be mass produced and cheap, but the care and perfection that goes into them would set most jewelers to shame. They are really works of beauty.
There were some other posts regarding hazardous materials in electronics products. They are correct.
A furnace is going to vaporize and volatilize a lot of really nasty stuff. Burning the drives pollutes big time. If you aren't set up to scrub the exhaust, you are dumping who knows what into your back yard and your neighbor's yards. Plus, if you are breathing any of it, you are setting yourself up for any number of nasty lung diseases, possibly cancers, etc.
Easy... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Easy... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Easy... (Score:4, Informative)
The aluminium takes the oxygen from the iron oxide, releasing the sigificant amount of energy and leaving the unoxidised iron.
If the aluminium was already oxidised, this would not happen.
Otherwise, yes - excellent idea. I even have a broken HDD I need to wipe, thanks!
Parent
Nuke it from orbit (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
An induction furnace is an AC magnetic source that works paticularly well :)
Once it's above the curie temperature it is not magnetic anymore and the magnetic domains are going to be arranged differently as it cools. A bit higher in temperature and any grain boundaries that may happen to have coincided with magnetic domains (I'm sure I read something about some correlation once) will be gone as well as the crystal structure co
Re:Easy... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup, that's right, folks, overwriting all the data on a hard drive just *once* puts it beyond the reach of anyone without extremely specialised equipment. For most modernish (made in the last 10 years) drives, then this will utterly destroy any previous data that gets overwritten.
No, the NSA do not have some magic machine that can read hard disks no matter how many times they've been over-written. You watch too much CSI.
No, there isn't a special secret command that manufacturers put in that show you what a sector used to hold before it was overwritten.
There's no guarantee that you'll hit every possible sector - some drives have metadata on tracks not normally accessible by the end user, and there are always mapped-out bad blocks that might still have old data on them. But seriously, no-one cares about your data enough to spend a fortune with a data recovery firm just to get your bookmarks and mp3s.
Just formatting the drive won't do it. YOu *do* need to hit every sector. It takes a while, and the electric drill method is quicker. It does leave you with a ruined drive, though, when it might otherwise have been useful.
If you don't believe that a single pass will clobber the data, try me. I'll give you an overwritten drive, and if you can tell me what was on it previously I'll give you a car.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Porn.
I want my car with 5 doors and 4 wheel traction. Thank you.
Do it the old fashioned way - shoot em! (Score:5, Funny)
For the curious, it usually takes a hot 357 magnum to penetrate and clear most modern drives. 9mm and 45acp either bounce off, or don't exit the drive.
Drill it, sink it, forget it. (Score:4, Insightful)
A drill bit is cheaper and easier. It also avoids those awkward ricochets and overshoots that put holes in people. This makes it difficult for all but the most determined people to read.
Dropping it in salt water is a sure way to destroy the data but this takes longer.
As for buried date treasure, don't bother. If you did not find it when you put the drive down and have not missed it, you don't need it.
Parent
holes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Do it the old fashioned way - shoot em! (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the hard part is doing something productive with them. They're really not good for much, except for marveling how cool magnetism is. Eddy currents are a good crowd pleaser.. made a pendulum type device with a led wired up to a coil, as it swung past a magnet the led would flicker.
Also, this:
http://xzzy.org/files/geek/eddy/eddy.avi [xzzy.org]
Know a guy who would make such projects and donate them to schools as educational toys.. schools are always glad for stuff like that.
Parent
Re:Do it the old fashioned way - shoot em! (Score:5, Informative)
like this [nixiebunny.com]
Parent
Re:Do it the old fashioned way - shoot em! (Score:4, Interesting)
They also work wonderfully on those annoying "inventory control" dye-pack tags that clerks all too frequently seem to "forget" to remove from your new shirt. Just stick the magnet at the end, you'll hear or feel a subtle click, and the metal pin will pop right out (it should do so easily - If you feel resistance, you don't have it right and will make a mess if you pull too hard).
You can also use them to deactivate the strips in books and CDs that trigger door alarms (but NOT the RFID ones, which look like a 1.5x1.5" sticker with a slightly thicker center and spiral around the outer edge).
But remember what the signs always say, these devices exist "for your protection". Not just for laughs from having some minimum-wage-slave frisk you at the door while everyone looks at you like a thief because another minimum-wage-slave couldn't bother to do their job and pass your purchase over the magic pad-o'-deactivation.
Parent
Re:Do it the old fashioned way - shoot em! (Score:5, Funny)
They stuff golden retriever puppies inside hard drives???
Parent
Re:Do it the old fashioned way - shoot em! (Score:5, Interesting)
I take the magnets out and use the best ones on our refrigerator. I give the rest to friends for that purpose.
Before doing this I connect them to a drive dock, specifically this one:
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/ComboDock.php [wiebetech.com]
I look at any files worth keeping and copy these to another modern HD. Since HD space is cheap these days, I have several complete DOS drive images on file. After that I let the computer do a multi-pass full data scramble erasure. This can take quite a while on big drives.
After the magnets are extracted, the left over pieces go to a metal recycler. The cases are usually made from many beer cans worth of aluminum.
Parent
Re:Do it the old fashioned way - shoot em! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Darik's Boot and Nuke (Score:5, Informative)
To 'clean' the drives.
Sledgehammer works good too.
We always take them apart. The magnets are fun to play with.
Grinder (Score:2)
Sledgehammers are fun, but I prefer taking a grinder to the platters.
Re:Darik's Boot and Nuke (Score:4, Informative)
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml [ucsd.edu]
which erases on the ATA command level. To my knowledge, this will zap data that DBAN misses, because DBAN can't access the hard disk's sector relocation tables (sectors that were about to go bad, so were remapped), and this low level utility is able to.
DBAN plus this utility should be OK for most things, however as always if the drive had relatively sensitive data on it, don't give it away, and destroy it physically (lots of creative methods. For drives I want to be sure that are decommissioned, I personally pull the platters apart, run over them with a vehicle, then chuck each platter in a separate garbage bin.)
Parent
Re:Darik's Boot and Nuke (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
The real question is... (Score:5, Funny)
Easy... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. Go buy yourself a harddrive enclosure that has a USB interface.
Smash the things into itty-bitty pieces. Very (very very) strong magnets work well too.
Re:Easy... (Score:5, Informative)
As far as disposal: open up the drives, take out the platters and use them for decorations or melt them, salvage the armature magnets for your refrigerator, recycle the metal.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The same Vantec unit is also available from Newegg, but far cheaper. [newegg.com]
Or, if one is feeling adventurous and/or wants lots of these adapters without going going broke, there's always Ebay [tinyurl.com], via which I've always had fantastic good luck ordering insanely inexpensive electronics like this directly from Hong Kong.
So far, importing things from Hong Kong only takes about as long to get here (Ohio)
Quick and easy (Score:2)
Try this: (Score:4, Informative)
'er we stalk the native 'ardrive (Score:2)
Someone narrate that in a cheesy Australian accent please.
Secure disk erase, give it to the kids for fun (Score:2)
far too dangerous for kids (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
All done.
external usb drive enclosures (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1945393&Sku=S457-1104 [tigerdirect.ca]
they work, they're simple, when closed they're virtually indestructible, when open, you can swap drives in seconds, hot-swapped and everything. IDE and SATA. I've used multiple brands, they're all the same. Some have a power switch if you care.
A handy USB device (Score:4, Informative)
Plugging them in... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.coolmaxusa.com/productDetails.asp?item=CD-350-COMBO&details=features&subcategory=converter&category=converter [coolmaxusa.com]
Know your best friend (s) (Score:4, Funny)
One thing that comes to mind... (Score:3, Funny)
Enemy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hit the drives hard with a decent size hammer, a couple of times on each side, just so that anyone can plainly see that the drives are toast and totally useless as computer parts.
After the smashing, just toss 'em in a bucket. When the bucket fills up, take it down to your friendly neighborhood scrap yard. If you're lucky, they'll pay a "dirty aluminum" rate for it. If you're unlucky, they'll pay a miscellaneous scrap rate, which will be considerably lower (around a nickel per pound, here).
Or if you're really adventurous/thrifty, you can break them down into their different constituent metals (keep it simple and just sort into piles of aluminum, zinc, magnetic steel, and nonmagnetic stainless), which will maximize the amount of cash you'll be paid.
Honestly: Nobody wants to invest the time, effort, money, and energy into trying to scavenge data from a physically broken hard drive at the bottom of a scrap hopper without knowing, in advance, what is contained therein.
But if you're really paranoid, you can always yank the platters and melt them into little aluminum ingots first. It just doesn't seem worth the effort for household data . . .
In any event, you can be sure that the drives will, at some point, be recycled into something new.
Speaking about lack of education (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because the iron-platinum compounds used in modern HDs have a very high curie-temperature doesnt mean that the tiny magnetic domains dont become superparamagnetic at a few 100C at most.
Otherwise, just erase them.
All this "we can real deleted files because of remanent magnetisation" is _CRAP_ . This was possible 15 years ago, when servos were misaligning over time.
And may 10 years ago, when bits were still sized in um. Nowadays, the
The question is... (Score:4, Funny)
A: I would imagine so.
hard drive art! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://polynomial.org/disc_wall2.jpg [polynomial.org]
Fire and brute force (Score:4, Funny)
Smash, apply ethanol, burn, smash, apply ethanol, burn
Wipe and donate, please (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting dock/stage rack/cradle/enclosure (Score:3, Informative)
Simple, of course... (Score:4, Funny)
Mousetraps (Score:3, Funny)
Horizontal Saw (Score:3, Interesting)
I sawed directly through the middle of the platter, cutting through the motor. It made a very neat cutaway study. Might make some art with it, dunno. It was also fun to watch.
Erm, this is one way!... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYPCPB1g3o [youtube.com]
I always take them apart (Score:3, Insightful)
I take them apart to admire the incredible workmanship that goes into them; the mirror polished platters and the wonderfully light head mechanisms that float so incredibly close over them.
Hard disks may be mass produced and cheap, but the care and perfection that goes into them would set most jewelers to shame. They are really works of beauty.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A furnace is going to vaporize and volatilize a lot of really nasty stuff. Burning the drives pollutes big time. If you aren't set up to scrub the exhaust, you are dumping who knows what into your back yard and your neighbor's yards. Plus, if you are breathing any of it, you are setting yourself up for any number of nasty lung diseases, possibly cancers, etc.