Best way to erase data from a failed drive b4 RMA?

[Caecus Veritas]

ok, i now officially hate wd. it's like the 5th or 6th drive to fail on me during past 10 years or so. their warranty is great and all but god dang it! it sucks!!! :| last time, it was my storage drive, and now.. it's my primary.

grrr... so last night, my windows suddenly comes to a freeze and i start hearing the dreaded 'click click click' (very quiet btw). upon closer examination after much grumbling, i see that the drive starts to spin up during power up and then starts to click away.. comp won't recognize the drive but it does slow down the post though.

i figure the drive is toast. but, i want to make sure all the data is erased before i return the drive. there's a lot of personal information in there that i wouldn't trust with some random tech guy (thank god my pr0n is all safe in my other drive!).

since the comp won't even recognize the drive, any type of low level or quick formatting does not seem to be an option. is there any other way to scramble all the data on it? maybe a really strong magnet?

cliff:
1. drive failed
2. bios won't recognize drive
3. how to delete/scramble all data on drive before RMA?

 

[Mark R]

You can't erase data from a failed drive. This is one of the big problems of data security.

If the data is that valuable, you'll have to physically destroy the drive and just accept that you've lost the warranty.

Some manufacturers will allow you to destroy the drive, and they'll still ship you a new one under warranty when they get the salvage, but they normally reserve this service for government, military or big businesses with highly confidential data.

 

[Caecus Veritas]

grrrr... do you know if a strong magnet will work at all or are they shielded?

thanks for your info.

 

[dingetje]

maybe you can nuke it in your microwave?

 

[0roo0roo]

well atleast seagate rma states that they wipe drives they get back before working on them.
i guess they don't want to deal with liability.
either they have a degauser machine or a bank of automated formating machine things they can plug drives into.

whether you want to trust that is your call. welcome to the suck that is harddrives.

a strong magnet won't do squat to a harddrive. you need a degausser
http://www.datalinksales.com/c...=detail&catalogno=HD-1
course i think those actually also render the drive broken by erasing the servo tracks so if they find out..they might reject your rma hehe

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Mark R
If the data is that valuable, you'll have to physically destroy the drive and just accept that you've lost the warranty.

this is what i would do...

just out of curiosity, in the same amount of time have you lost other hdds?

 

[Psymon]

I really doubt the "random tech guy" would ever dig up all your files on the drive while working on it. However, I'm going to have to agree with the previous posters...if you don't want to risk it, you'll just have to bury it in the back yard after mutiliation and buy a new one.

 

[Caecus Veritas]

Originally posted by: bob4432

just out of curiosity, in the same amount of time have you lost other hdds?

had a maxtor, quantum and some other drives (forgot the brand) - not a single one went bad during approximately 5 years of lifetime before becoming obsolete. i guess i did have a lot more wd drives though... every single one went down clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking... ugh! thank god my data drive is a seagate.. still going strong.

anyhow, i guess it's going back to wd as is. thanks for all the help!

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
a strong magnet won't do squat to a harddrive. you need a degausser
http://www.datalinksales.com/c...=detail&catalogno=HD-1

Not true. Neodymium magnets are strong enough to 'degauss' a hard drive at a fraction of the cost of a commercial electromagnetic degausser. The trick is to know how much 'pull' is required to coerce the magnetic coating into giving up the ones and zeros without literally bending the platters or pulling them off the spindle, as a relatively cheap neodymium magnet is certainly capable of doing.

http://www.unitednuclear.com/magnets.htm

http://www.kjmagnetics.com/

http://www.rare-earth-magnets.com/

Someone may have posted a little research into the grade and pull-force required to reliably destroy data but not the hard drive itself using NIB magnets, but I'm not aware of any such experiment.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: Caecus Veritas
(thank god my pr0n is all safe in my other drive!)

I reckon this particular type of data is the most secure and most redundantly backed-up in most techies' PCs!

 

[Caecus Veritas]

thanks for the info tcsenter. i'll have to try that when i have time with some other older drives. cool!

 

[JackBurton]

A screw driver and a sander will do the trick....and a drill.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
a strong magnet won't do squat to a harddrive. you need a degausser
http://www.datalinksales.com/c...=detail&catalogno=HD-1

Not true. Neodymium magnets are strong enough to 'degauss' a hard drive at a fraction of the cost of a commercial electromagnetic degausser. The trick is to know how much 'pull' is required to coerce the magnetic coating into giving up the ones and zeros without literally bending the platters or pulling them off the spindle, as a relatively cheap neodymium magnet is certainly capable of doing.

http://www.unitednuclear.com/magnets.htm

http://www.kjmagnetics.com/

http://www.rare-earth-magnets.com/

Someone may have posted a little research into the grade and pull-force required to reliably destroy data but not the hard drive itself using NIB magnets, but I'm not aware of any such experiment.

i think you'd have to rip the platters out and rub the magnets on it directly for that to work for most of those. maybe the ones over 20 dollars could work through the case.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
i think you'd have to rip the platters out and rub the magnets on it directly for that to work for most of those. maybe the ones over 20 dollars could work through the case.

If the magnet is too weak, sure. That's what I meant by needing to know the strength (pull factor) of magnet required to do the job without destroying the hard drive.

The more powerful neodymium magnets can rip the platters off the spindle and the read/write actuators off their mounts. IOW, use too powerful of a NIB magnet, and your hard drive will have some loose parts rattling around inside (and possibly needing two people and a pry bar to separate the magnet and hard drive).

Somewhere in between too weak and too strong is a magnet capable of doing the job, I just don't know where that point is.

Its difficult to overstate how unintuitively powerful the higher grade NIB magnets are. They can break hand bones and crush fingers clean off if you are unfortunate enough to get your dibs caught between the bigger ones.