How to make SURE that the data on a HDD is not recoverable!!!

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dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
8,558
3
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Originally posted by: nweaver
midget kiddie pr0n. If you can't let others know what a sick bastard you are, then you need to pony up for a drive an not RMA.

Come on guys, be creative. Maybe he is James Bond or something.
 

firefaux

Banned
May 5, 2005
105
0
0
if the data on it is so important (like what, top company secrets? evidence of aliens? satanic kiddie goat porn?), i wouldnt risk rma'ing it at all or giving it away. i'd do what everyone else seems to love doing, that is, destroy the hd. breaking it with a hammer or gun sounds like fun, but your data would still be recoverable. i'd suggest going the melting route. you can use it to cast little figurines.
 

CrispyFried

Golden Member
May 3, 2005
1,122
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I turn my dead hds into ash trays.

I cant think of anyway to erase it without destroying it, sorry.

If it were nudes of my gf she would insist on destroying it herself with the GP100.
 

GimpyOne

Senior member
Aug 25, 2004
302
1
0
Originally posted by: Kensai
The size of a magnet you'd need to dis-orientate a harddrive would be massive. We're talking something like 5 X 500 gaus (might not have spelled it right) rare earth magnets.

You're thinking too small. I have several 140,000 to 180,000 guass magnets sitting around here. Aka NMR superconducting magnets, they will erase everything without physically damaging the drive. Although it may not be usefull again as it could reset/bend the read/write heads....

(we actually had a problem where there was a lady in the office above the lab who had to have her computer reinstalled about twice a week for two months until they figured out it was directly over the magnet. This is with a 15ft ceiling and 3ft thick conrete pad between them)

On the burn side, dump it in a furnace and melt it to a puddle. It requires amazingly low temperatures to do that to the silly metal alloys they use in hard drives.(I'm a ceramist, so anything below 1200-1400C is low temperature)
 

Oyeve

Lifer
Oct 18, 1999
22,066
882
126
Originally posted by: Diasper
Originally posted by: raanemaan
Fire. Take it apart and burn platters


No, you need to send it into the sun! :sun:


...or else you could use Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) from sourceforge..

You can do a variety of wipes and as many wipes as you want including using random algorithyms of 1s and 0s.

If data is recoverable after all that, then you have some very intelligent and very rich enemies :)

Thats what we use at work. Works great, takes forever tho.
 

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
1
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alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: DaFinn
Hmm, there is some of my company data which will get my booty kicked if it gets into wrong hands. This is my home laptop, so the data should not be there in the first place. I've done some work from home and transferred data that I needed there.

Other than that, there are nude photos of my wife, which I don't want to see in teh interweb a week after RMA :p

---> New drive it is, thanks for all "interesting" suggestion on data destruction...

Have you tried the "freezer recovery trick"? Stick your notebook's HD in the freezrwr for 10 or so minutes [do a "search" here . . . it has worked for many - me included]:thumbsup:

Might be able to get it to work long enough to use a file deleter on your "sensitive" data. ;)
 
Aug 23, 2000
15,509
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PM pics of wife? I won't post them all over the internet.

Though your only option is to get a new HDD and destroy this one. drop the drive from about 4 feet and the platters will shatter. Trust me on this I know from 1st hand experience when I dropped a customers laptop HDD.
 

nellienelson1

Member
Oct 27, 2004
99
0
0
Originally posted by: Diasper
Out of interest, how good are these data recovery guys - could they get data off a drive after using DBAN? That is 10+ random wipes?


btw i've always wondered what it'd do in the microwave...

the micro wave? well considering the fact that the outside case of the drive is a metal alloy....... would be quite entertaining, something like putting a spoon in, except with some flamable bits (pcb) i think it would be fun, give it a go!!!
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
8,808
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Originally posted by: nellienelson1
Originally posted by: Diasper
Out of interest, how good are these data recovery guys - could they get data off a drive after using DBAN? That is 10+ random wipes?


btw i've always wondered what it'd do in the microwave...

the micro wave? well considering the fact that the outside case of the drive is a metal alloy....... would be quite entertaining, something like putting a spoon in, except with some flamable bits (pcb) i think it would be fun, give it a go!!!

It would likely fry the circuit boards/pins, but with the metal casing, it is unlikely to actually damage the platters and destroy the data.

Disassembling the drive and exposing the platters ruins them. Melting down the drive is a little overkill, if you ask me. :p

Out of interest, how good are these data recovery guys - could they get data off a drive after using DBAN? That is 10+ random wipes?

Unlikely. You might be able to pull a few pieces of data here and there, but anything more than a few bytes long should be scrambled beyond recognition.
 

imported_Dimicron

Senior member
Jan 24, 2005
327
0
0
Drill some holes in it or unscrew the top. Go sailing on the nearest ocean. Get at least 5nm from shore. Throw pesky hard drive overboard. Done. Works for the Navy, can work for you... although the hard drive itself could technically be recoverable if we ever get the technology to go as deep underwater as the Marianas Trench the salt in the water will pretty much burn the platters and the pcb and anything recovered from underwater tends to corrode rapidly once brough back up unless kept in salt water (i.e. At the Smithsonian most of the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo capsules are kept in special enclosures with saline in them) ;)
 

charlietee

Golden Member
Jul 27, 2001
1,280
16
81
Well it sounds like you are going to have to eat the hard drive...If you have company data that you are not supposed to have then it certainly is not worth the risk to RMA the hard drive.

Just pony up the duckies for a new lappy hard drive and use your imagination...There is more than one way to skin a cat...So there has to be thousands of ways to destroy a hard drive.
 

Mday

Lifer
Oct 14, 1999
18,647
1
81
create a batch file that copies one large file over to the HDD. You can make it a multicolored 100MB JPEG of nothing. make an estimate as to how many copies of that jpeg file will have to be copied over until the drive is full. generate a batch file which copies that "jpeg" file over and over again (with different names each time).

boot using a cd.
fdisk, format.
run the batch file


repeat 10x.



but since your HDD is dead.. you need a damn powerful and large magnetic field. do you have access to a degaussing wand or coil?
 

Cooler

Diamond Member
Mar 31, 2005
3,835
0
0
Take the disks out and melt them. Put HD back together - the disks. I Did this to one of my 486 HD once.
 

theMan

Diamond Member
Mar 17, 2005
4,386
0
0
using a microwave, submerge it in superheated water for 3o minutes. be very careful. or, plant some c4 in there. hehehehe
 

ImaNihilist

Member
Aug 8, 2003
39
0
66
info.cern.ch
Originally posted by: vegetation
Originally posted by: ImaNihilist
Whenever I have an HDD die on me I take it to an outdoor range and shoot it with my 50 cal Barrett.

That wont help much, the data can still be recovered fairly easily.

Have you ever seen what something looks like after it gets shot with a 50 cal? I should take a picture. I'm pretty sure it's not recoverable...as you can barely even tell what it is after a single shot.
 

GuitarDaddy

Lifer
Nov 9, 2004
11,465
1
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Send it to me, I will throw it in my attic or garage, and it will not be found in our lifetime:) I,m pretty sure Jimmy Hoffa is in my attic somewhere