CRUSH YOUR HARD DRIVE! ARE THEY NUTS?

[athlonxp2200]

How could anyone be stupid enough to crush their hard drive! Lately I've heard a lot of people saying "When getting rid of your old computer you should crush your hard drive to protect against personal information theft." Some of them say you can crush it or format it, but I say just do a complete format. Don't get me wrong, I know some format types simply get rid of the file table, but their are others that completely clean the drive.
Afterwards you can sell it and make a profit not a chunk of metal.

 

[song414]

Originally posted by: athlonxp2200
How could anyone be stupid enough to crush their hard drive! Lately I've heard a lot of people saying "When getting rid of your old computer you should crush your hard drive to protect against personal information theft." Some of them say you can crush it or format it, but I say just do a complete format. Don't get me wrong, I know some format types simply get rid of the file table, but their are others that completely clean the drive.
Afterwards you can sell it and make a profit not a chunk of metal.

you can NEVER completely get rid of data on a hard drive. The only way you can is to override it with other data. A complete format does nothing. Even crushing it you can retreive some info. I say crush it and burn it.

 

[kiIIxthexIights]

lol or just sell it and hope the other person is cooler then to steal you =P

 

[athlonxp2200]

Guess I'll have to completely read about formatting then because I sure thought that a complete format removes all data.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

On OS X you can write zeros to your drive, to prevent personal information theft. Takes a long time too.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: athlonxp2200
Guess I'll have to completely read about formatting then because I sure thought that a complete format removes all data.

It doesn't

 

[athlonxp2200]

On OS X you can write zeros to your drive, to prevent personal information theft. Takes a long time too.

Thought there was something you can do instead of being a barbaric hard drive crusher.

 

[potato28]

The only way to completely destroy the data is to destroy the drive itself. Unless you would take the risk of having idenity theft, BURN THE DRIVE WITH THERMITE!!!

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: athlonxp2200
Thought there was something you can do instead of being a barbaric hard drive crusher.

You can get programs to do this, but a standard format isn't going to do it,

 

[cKGunslinger]

Intelligence agencies have a high sucess rate of reading data from a drive that has been formatted, written with patterns multiple times, cut into pieces and melted.

Granted, these agencies probably aren't going to purchase your drive to steal your AT login ID, but formatting a drive does *not* protect your information from anyone who is determined to get at it. Much like a lock on your door does not prevent anyone who *really* wants to get in you house from doing so.

 

[64ninjas]

Originally posted by: potato28BURN THE DRIVE WITH THERMITE!!!

This is the only real solution, you need to melt the disk. Smashing the casing and all simply shatters the platters, they could easily be reassembled / read in place.

 

[Stokes]

just get out some diesel and be generous

 

[Jeff7]

Cheap and effective way of destroying a hard drive platter - grindstone or sanding belt. I doubt anyone's going to reassemble a few million bits of dust into platters.

Though I do like the thermite idea. That reaction gets hot enough to burn/melt through a ceramic crucible. Saw it done twice just last semester. Quite impressive.

 

[stevem326]

What about a product like Wipe Drive? It's on a floppy disk that you boot from and it claims to erase all data from your HD. It took about 11 hours to wipe an 80 GB drive in my case. I understand the whole thing about incinerating a HD, but are you saying products like Wipe Drive don't do the job?

This product is used by the Dept of Defense, law enforcement, Fortune 500 companies...I would think if they're using it then it must be good?

Here's a link to Wipe Drive

 

[Sentinel]

Melt it down?

 

[corkyg]

Wipe Drive can erase data - but, just as it was possible with magnetic tapes, edges can be read by sophisticated equipment and analysts where the erase heads do not adequately cover side lobes/splatter. DoD wipe requires three successive wipes. It is then pretty secure. But, burning, i.e., melting at high heat is the only 100%, guaranteed way to dispose of a hard drive.

Smashing is deceptive - the platters don't get smashed. Melt 'em!

 

[stevem326]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Wipe Drive can erase data - but, just as it was possible with magnetic tapes, edges can be read by sophisticated equipment and analysts where the erase heads do not adequately cover side lobes/splatter. DoD wipe requires three successive wipes. It is then pretty secure. But, burning, i.e., melting at high heat is the only 100%, guaranteed way to dispose of a hard drive.

Smashing is deceptive - the platters don't get smashed. Melt 'em!

I agree...the only 100% certain way to destroy all data on a HD is to melt it into liquid. However, if you were donating a PC to a school or church and used Wipe Drive 3 times (or more) would you feel secure? I'm thinking about doing this myself in a few months.

 

[athlonxp2200]

Now a product like wipe drive MUST work if the government uses it.

 

[stevem326]

Originally posted by: athlonxp2200
Now a product like wipe drive MUST work if the government uses it.

That's what I've always thought...but according to CorkyG it can't erase side lobes and splatter (to be honest I'm not 100% sure what those two items are)...is it the side of the disc?

 

[Bozo Galora]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1911131,00.asp

(SNIPPED QUOTE)
For Ontrack, it was just another week at the office. Apparently the company recovers data from fire-damaged drives all the time. And that's one of the easier tasks. In 2003, Ontrack engineers successfully recovered files from a drive that arrived in Minnesota with a bullet hole in it. A few weeks later, they salvaged a disk that had spent three months at the bottom of a lake.

The company deals with everything from wine and coffee spills to PC sabotage. The week Jeremy sent in his drive, engineers worked on a laptop drive systematically ripped apart by a pair of pliers. At first glance, it looked as if a small animal had chewed through the platters. "We're working with a federal law enforcement agency on that one," says Mike Burmeister, director of Ontrack's recovery operations. "Let your imagination run wild."

=============
Actually, a very strong magnet is best.

And as the article says, dropping a drive is the worst thing you can do. I also see many people keeping PC's under a desk and whilst on, absent mindedly kicking them.

 

[insename2]

Originally posted by: athlonxp2200

On OS X you can write zeros to your drive, to prevent personal information theft. Takes a long time too.

Thought there was something you can do instead of being a barbaric hard drive crusher.

zero fill in isn't limited to OS X

Zero fill in however doesn't completely remove data, the platters will still hold the info(0s and 1s differ and can be detected by scanning the drive

i think the one effective way instead of burning is to put it under a really strong magnet... (also works with brains)

 

[ericlala]

i dont mind sharing the porn

 

[Arcanedeath]

Writing 0's to the drive 7 times is enough to make any reasonable effort even by a data recovery service almost imposssible, unless your talking the CIA / FBI government lab w/ stupidly expensive equipment and months of time to recover your data doing this should be suciffient.

 

[insename2]

right but depending on your hard drive, it might take up to 4ish hours to do a complete zero fill in... and if u care enough about your private data to want to completely destroy it i think its more logical to just completely destroy the hdd rather than spend 28 hours and still risk the chance of having it recovered...

 

[JEDIYoda]

pardon me if I seem amused by this thread.....
But it really is kind of a rediculous thread if you stop and think about it.
There are no programs available that can wipe your hard drive totally clean.
But with that said.....how many of us would know how to recover information from a hard drive we bought from say joe schmoo who told us the harddrive was clean...or at the very least reformatted???
Sure you could pay $$$ for a private company to TRY to extract information for you....
How many of us are doing things that would require the FBI or some other government agency to snag our computer and take information off the harddrive?

See my points??

Also....mind you I am assumming that I am not talking to a bunch of fools when I say this....
But there are certain things you never ever store on your harddrive....
credit card numbers...important telephone numbers....addresses......etc...