throwing out laptop- best way to destroy hard drive?

Shmuck

I heard you should destroy the hard drive to ensure people can't find your computer and access info you stored on it. So whats the best way of doin this? I heard smashing it up is the best way, but can I not just immerse it in water? or possibly light it on fire?

seanybiker

your throwing out a full laptop. Ill take it you keep harddrive.
Burn the hard drive or just format it and use it again

AlmightyCushion

Run a program called dban a few times. This will write over the whole hard drive and lower the chance of anyone recovering your data from it.

Alanstrainor

Eat it?





If you dont want to format it and keep it yourself, you could just smash it and dispose of it. No point taking it to extremes like burning etc etc what crazy important data do you have on it:eek:
If it were me, format and keep. Could come in handy.

Ruu_Old

A good few belts with a lump hammer or riddle it with bullets.

Shmuck

The laptops a piece of shiit, the screen is completely fcuked so I can't format it or run any program to clear the hard drive. The keyboard is also fcuked so its worthless, but I would like to be on the safe side and destroy the hard drive. I've no tools to smash it so would prefer other methods. Think I'll just pour loads of liquids over it and hope that does the trick.

dade

Shmuck wrote: »

The laptops a piece of shiit, the screen is completely fcuked so I can't format it or run any program to clear the hard drive. The keyboard is also fcuked so its worthless, but I would like to be on the safe side and destroy the hard drive. I've no tools to smash it so would prefer other methods. Think I'll just pour loads of liquids over it and hope that does the trick.

nah not liquid may not seep right in and at tomes things can still work, plug in a screen and keyboard then use dban. take it out and toss it in a drawer if needs be

Alanstrainor

You have nothing to smash it with? Get a big rock, and drop it on it about 5 times. That should do the trick!

minxie

petrol, match and a lighter

Overheal

keep it; put it in an external case; bam, new external USB storage drive.

partyatmygaff

Put a big neodymium magnet on top and roll it around a few times, then turn the hdd over and with a sharp knife stab it right through and then smash the logic board with a blunt object.
Then pour some undiluted bleach inside it and leave it for a few hours. Drain the bleach and then with the hammer or blunt object smash the case and hopefully the platters inside will break up and then you can be pretty much guaranteed no one will see all those *ahem* pictures.

I like breaking things.

Overheal

If you really want to get rid of it, drill through the platters and then smash it up with a hammer (Drive through the platters with some nails, alternatively). Anybody who wants to recover the data after that would have to spend hundreds on a recovery service, and probably wouldnt turn up squat either way: Unless you have nuclear arming codes or the Colonel's Secret Recipe from KFC nobody is going to go to those lengths just to fetch an email password. Talk about being paranoid..

partyatmygaff

RTDH in disguise?


Even just smashing it up is sufficient, no one would care too much about some personal email passwords or even your bank A/C details except if your loaded or you had some secrets on it.

Just get a hammer and smash. Then put some strong magnets on top and its guaranteed ruined and unrecoverable

Capt'n Midnight

lots of laptop drives have a glass platter
a pointy screw driver jammed through the top can do the trick , eye protection and gloves


What type of laptop ?

MrTrebus

as suggested, use dban
put the disk in the drive and restart.
if you r lappies set to boot from "cd" first as opposed to HDD then problem solved !!
I'd love to know whats so secret on the machine though

Run_to_da_hills

Gove the HDD a couple of strikes with an arc welding plant.

gamblitis

Carry it around with you until you come across some council breast feeding shovels on the side of the road.I'm sure their jack hammer could do with being used once in the day.And you'll have some fun doing it!

the_syco

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Run a program called dban a few times. This will write over the whole hard drive and lower the chance of anyone recovering your data from it.

Agreed. If you plan on selling it, that is. If not, DBAN it, and then drill 10 or so holes into the hard disk, dig a hole in the back garden, and throw the HDD into it, within a plastic bag.

IIIAcHmEdIII

trow it as hard as u can against the ground and if that doesnt work drive over it with ur car of stab it with a knife or u could take it fully apart

batman2000

Ruu wrote: »

A good few belts with a lump hammer or riddle it with bullets.

No kidding, this is one of the better solutions

TestTransmission

The best way?

http://www.germes-online.com/direct/dbimage/50302785/RT_Series_Road_Roller.jpg

AlmightyCushion

jackncoke wrote: »

The best way?

http://www.germes-online.com/direct/dbimage/50302785/RT_Series_Road_Roller.jpg

Well not really. Doing something like that could still allow people to get some of the data back (it would cost them a lot of money though). The best way would be to dban the shít out of it about 100 times, then stick it through a degausser (those things cost tens of thousands last I checked), then smash the platters into tiny pieces and drop all the bits into a big vat of acid. For most people that would be a tad overkill though.

maglite

if you want to post it down to me i'll take care of it for you

KatCookie

Maybe theres no huge secret on it, he justs want the most fun way of destoying it
Personally, i'd suggest a large basin with liquids of your choise, be it water or bleach or cheap beer
Get some large plastic gloves and a rock or a hammer (assuming you've already unscrewed eveything you can off it)and start smashing it- while in the water. The get electrocute the liquid (without electrocuting yourself) this should fry the Hard Drive.
Then get a very heavy tractor or something and drive over it swveral times, this should disfure it so nobody wll be able to recognise it was a hard drive and then just bury it or bring it to your local dump

Capt'n Midnight

To be sure you need to melt the platters

Thermite is good if you can get some

stick-dan

to be secure when disposing of your harddrive you should perhaps do so according to forensics standards. The NSA Define three writes over the laptop to be forensically secure.

Mount the hard-drive to a linux machine start up a terminal and run a dd command to overwrite the harddrive with zero's. Do this again this time using the linux random feature to write with and finally do it again with the zero's once more and your hd is forensically secure.

Experts have published reports recently tho saying that after overwriting data just once there is as slim as .098 percent of a chance of getting back one megabyte of information.

Capt'n Midnight

stick-dan wrote:

The NSA Define three writes over the laptop to be forensically secure.

Which is exactly what would you expect them to say if they could still recover data after three passes.

stick-dan

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Which is exactly what would you expect them to say if they could still recover data after three passes.

nah im in a forensics course and have read the documentation on multiple different experiments carried out to recover data, it's all above board.

KatCookie

stick-dan wrote: »

.

Mount the hard-drive to a linux machine start up a terminal and run a dd command to overwrite the harddrive with zero's. Do this again this time using the linux random feature to write with and finally do it again with the zero's once more and your hd is forensically secure.

and Then we can smash/burn/shoot/jack hammer it, just for the laugh ?

IIIAcHmEdIII

give it to ur dog as a toy :D or drive over it a few thimes

Capt'n Midnight

stick-dan wrote: »

nah im in a forensics course and have read the documentation on multiple different experiments carried out to recover data, it's all above board.

Unless you get complete saturation on each magnetic domain it's probable that if you better heads and electronics you can read finer levels than 0 and 1 which give clues as to the previous value. 0.9 will be read as a 1 by the drive , the reason it's lower than 1 is that the previous value was a 0 , coversally 1.1 will also be read as a 1 but the previouse value would also be 1

also newer smaller heads would instead of seeing 0's and 1's as tower blocks would give you contours and since the head may not be exactly aligned at every write it might be possible to work back to what was underneath