how do you screw up your hard drive?

[Sultan]

Originally posted by: Chadder007

Originally posted by: Sultan

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie
oh you just want it to stop working? sounds like a warranty scam to me

lol
no
this hdd didnt have seagate's 5-year warranty

Yeah, Id have to say this is a scam also.

why would i want to replace a WORKING drive with another WORKING drive? And if it is bad, then I wouldnt need to be on this forum asking for some ideas. So how can it be scam?

 

[Sultan]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: Sultan

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot
dude just unplug the hdd. it will say no boot disk detected - "proof" the hard drive died. if its so crappy prolly nothing is under warranty to be scammed anyways. doubtful the mom whould have any idea anyways. hell, you send me teh working one, ill send you a broken one!

Can i please get a technically sound idea from this geek forum?

How technically-sound is the mom?

OK, overclock the processor, and undervolt everything in sight. Then run defrag and Prime95 at the same time and you should generate some nice data corruption.

thats only data corruption. i want to get the hdd in NON-WORKING condition with no physical damage

 

[Bulk Beef]

Electrical OD - feed it 120v and stand back.

 

[Sultan]

Originally posted by: sward666
Electrical OD - feed it 120v and stand back.

wont that show physical damage? like burn marks, sparks, etc?

 

[3chordcharlie]

Try connecting the power pins to a car battery. Or pretty much any other pins.

I'm more and more interested in why you want to do this though. Your explanation isn't that convincing - how technically competent is the person you're trying to fool?

Edit -not power pins, those are 12V anyway so it probably wouldn't hurt it too badly.

 

[BooGiMaN]

until you tell us what neferious scheme you got cooking your not getting any real help from us...

 

[Sultan]

Originally posted by: BooGiMaN
until you tell us what neferious scheme you got cooking your not getting any real help from us...

i already told you all

 

[torpid]

Sorry this doesn't make sense. You are obviously not telling the whole truth. The hard drive is the last thing you'd want to break in this situation. You should break the most worthless part and then salvage everything else. The hard drive should be spared since it may have some cool stuff on it like her diary and what not.

 

[OrganizedChaos]

rub the controller side against your tv

 

[RedRooster]

Put it on one of those degaussing machines. We have one here at work, and we use it to wipe drives that we no longer need, before throwing them away.
It erases everything, and causes minute damage inside(to the heads I'd imagine), because none of the drives ever work after putting them on that thing.
If that's still too much damage for you, you're screwed.

 

[Bulk Beef]

Originally posted by: Sultan

Originally posted by: sward666
Electrical OD - feed it 120v and stand back.

wont that show physical damage? like burn marks, sparks, etc?

Then use less than 120. Or connect the 12v power to the data pins until it stops working. Or hook it up and dunk it in a bucket of water. Use your imagination dude.

 

[Sultan]

Originally posted by: torpid
Sorry this doesn't make sense. You are obviously not telling the whole truth. The hard drive is the last thing you'd want to break in this situation. You should break the most worthless part and then salvage everything else. The hard drive should be spared since it may have some cool stuff on it like her diary and what not.

omg!
i aint lying.
my reason is the truth, though she isnt technically my cousin. apart from that, everything is true.

all the ideas you ppl have been giving me are the most simplistic ones, ones that even she'd have thought of. she asked me, and i didnt know any better way.

now since i studied computer science, i feel i should know this. now if someone here is smart and knows a good way, i'd like to know.

and those who continue to doubt my story, carry on. i didnt lie.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

there are so many ways to fool a person into thinking a computer is broken that i just dont see why you are so intent on actually causing it to die.

furthermore, if you have no intent of RMAing it as you claim, there are ways of physically damaging it that are unlikely of being detected by your average mom. either you are making this much more difficult than it needs to be, or you have some ulterior motives.

i dont see why my idea of swapping it out with a broken one is so bad. you save a good hard drive from dying and acheive your initial goal.

the only thing worse than not getting good adivce is not taking it...

 

[Chadder007]

Get something like a pencil and just let it stick in between the fans of the CPU cooler and turn it on and run Prime95.

 

[Sultan]

Originally posted by: sward666

Originally posted by: Sultan

Originally posted by: sward666
Electrical OD - feed it 120v and stand back.

wont that show physical damage? like burn marks, sparks, etc?

Then use less than 120. Or connect the 12v power to the data pins until it stops working. Or hook it up and dunk it in a bucket of water. Use your imagination dude.

Jesus, i can do better than that.

Electrical damage is evident. Why cant i just unscrew the drive and scratch the surface of those spindles?

Any TECHNICALLY sound idea please?

 

[3chordcharlie]

find and change a couple of random jumpers on the motherboard...

unseat the ram slightly...

undervolt the processor until it won't boot...

overclock the processor until the pci goes out of spec...

the ideas you've had here might not be all that original, but they'll easily do the trick.

 

[CraigRT]

unplug it and plug it in many times to a running system (no IDE) and see how long it lasts.

 

[Sultan]

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot
there are so many ways to fool a person into thinking a computer is broken that i just dont see why you are so intent on actually causing it to die.

furthermore, if you have no intent of RMAing it as you claim, there are ways of physically damaging it that are unlikely of being detected by your average mom. either you are making this much more difficult than it needs to be, or you have some ulterior motives.

i dont see why my idea of swapping it out with a broken one is so bad. you save a good hard drive from dying and acheive your initial goal.

the only thing worse than not getting good adivce is not taking it...

maaaaaaan, if i needed some help in social engineering, i wouldnt be in a geek forum.

apart from obtaining the objectives, which can be done in a million ways, I WANT to know how this is possible!

 

[Bryophyte]

Dropping a hard drive while it's spinning up could probably damage it without anyone seeing the damage externally. But I think what you are proposing is a pretty sh1tty thing to do to his parents. Grow up. If your cousin really wants a new computer, he can get a job and pay for it himself.

 

[Linflas]

If you are on the up and up you don't have to do anything other than use a bad data cable to cause enough errors to convince anyone not versed in troubleshooting that the computer is FUBAR. Hell you really don't have to do more than slightly remove one end of the data cable from the drive.