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Wiping a "dead" hard drive?

Nitemare

Nitemare

Lifer
I have a 500 GB Seagate that just died, no clicks, no nothing just won't detect all of a sudden.

It's still under warranty so I was going to RMA it back to Seagate, but I have all my banking and account information on the planars.

I've always used dban to wipe drives before, but I'm pretty sure it won't detect a drive that the bios can not see.

Any other suggestions?
 
If you can't read/write to the drive, there's not much you can do. Maybe a degaussing coil might do it. Maybe it won't.

If you can't afford to be wrong, consider a sledgehammer to the drive and just get a new one.
 
degausser will annihilate the data. better than a sledgehammer, gun, or explosive.

Blowing up the drive, it could be pieced together and read. a degausser realigns the magnetic material in the drive used to store the data, destroying the 0s and 1s that make it up.
 
Originally posted by: RebateMonger
If you can't read/write to the drive, there's not much you can do. Maybe a degaussing coil might do it. Maybe it won't.

If you can't afford to be wrong, consider a sledgehammer to the drive and just get a new one.
Click to expand...

I might just throw it in the freezer and seeing if i can run dban on it, enough to do something to it. Either that or build an electro magnet and zap it.
 
Get a bar magnet and place it on the top of the drive where the metal plate is, and move it in circles and back and forth a couple times, movement is the important part. The data will be corrupted. There are several commercial erasers that use just a permanent magnet.
Drives are NOT shielded from magnets.

In my testing this one works well.
http://www.allelectronics.com/...MIUM-BAR-MAGNET/1.html


Only tried with older drives, 40GB, but I bet newer drives are even more susceptible.
 
Originally posted by: Nitemare
I have a 500 GB Seagate that just died, no clicks, no nothing just won't detect all of a sudden.

It's still under warranty so I was going to RMA it back to Seagate,

Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...
The only way to be 100% sure that Seagate can't access your data and contact the appropriate authorities, is to...
1. Disassemble the drive into its component parts.
2. Use a 3lb. hammer to smash those parts into a pile of scrap.
3. Let the scrap soak in a bath of sulfuric acid based drain cleaner for a week.
4. When the week is over, rinse what parts remain with distilled water, place in a burlap sack and bury them in a rural area, away from prying eyes.

>> Take that Seagate!!!

 
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