How to Say Goodbye to Old Hard Drives? 337
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?
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.
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.
Try this: (Score:4, Informative)
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]
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.
Wipe and donate, please (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy... (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) as stuff does from California, and it's cheaper than UPS.
Interesting dock/stage rack/cradle/enclosure (Score:3, Informative)
far too dangerous for kids (Score:5, Informative)
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.)
Re:Do it the old fashioned way - shoot em! (Score:5, Informative)
like this [nixiebunny.com]
Re:Melt Them (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.
Re:The timing of this is uncanny ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Easy... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Easy... (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 completely changes
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!