Hard drive destruction...

I hope this question doesn't sound too stupid but...

how does one completely destroy a hard-drive, so that information is inaccessible on it indefinately? I don't want people to be able to use it again, after me.

Does completely beating the s-h-i-t-e out of it with a lump hammer do the trick? I went down that road.

Cheers for any information.

Stephen

Open it up and take out the platters (they look a bit like CD's) and beat the sh1t out of them

cartman

well mr cia person....
if u broke it by beltin it with a hammer dat would work yes,
and u must have had some very special information on dat hdd if beltin it doesnt work pm and ill break it for u...

Originally posted by Cartman
well mr cia person....
if u broke it by beltin it with a hammer dat would work yes,
and u must have had some very special information on dat hdd if beltin it doesnt work pm and ill break it for u...

thanks but i fairly beat them ****less!

Stephen, i found the things that look like cds, and i didn't take them out but after beating them relentlessly, the top one of damaged and they were all bent so that means that it's inaccessible?

As a by-note, the cd-things are the actual storage area?

thanks for the info

LoGiE

Nah...Get a drill and drill straight through it a few times. That will put it totaly out of commission. It's how the computer recycling/scrapping companies do it:D

Matfinn

Why do you have to smash the thing up?

All you have to do is format it in linux as an ext2fs partition, and then fill it with a load of garbled text. use

cat /dev/dsp /mount/filesystem


and that will fill it up


matt

Lenny

Because its still possible to get data off the ehads even when the harddrive is formatted,
How do you think the police get data off child porn kings when they think they've outsmarted the police by formatting..
Using a *very* powerful magnet to the harddrive will destroy the data on it, AFAIK thats how AIB and other banks get their data destroed on the drives.

Winters

You can still read the data on a Hard Drive up to its 7th format. If you really want to get rid of stuff ... format it at least 7-10 times.

Why did you want to distroy the HDD anywho? Was it filled with kiddy porn or something?

Stephen

Yeah Moonhawk the platters are where the data is stored. Maybe you could just take those out and throw away the rest of the drive. Then burn them and hammer them and drill them and stuff

Defenistrator

when RAF Sealand decomission PC's they take out the harddisks and drill a couple of large holes in them, then they are sent to one of these garbage compacting type companies.

Ruaidhri

write 1's to the partition. there is a prog that will allow you to fill your HS with 1's,rendering everything useless(but still a functioning drive)

longword

Originally posted by Ruaidhri
write 1's to the partition. there is a prog that will allow you to fill your HS with 1's,rendering everything useless(but still a functioning drive)

Not quite enough I'm afraid. You won't be able to read the data back through the regular drive interface of course, but media forensics will be able to lift most of the data off no bother - I'm talking commercial organizations that will do this for anyone. At a price of course.

There are dedicated scrubbing programs out there that will write a series of patterns to the disk several times. That's the only way to be sure. Drilling holes in the media is not a complete answer either - that will only render the data in the hole unreadable. Similar strategies of moderate physical platter damage are also unreliable.

http://wipe.sourceforge.net/ is a good place to start reading if you're paranoid and using Linux.

po0k

create a big elector magnetic field that's changing, ie power ful speakers/a guitar amp (preferbly old/battered - just in case )
take apart the drive as much as you can, plug into a spare power socket on a PSU and spin her up.
Next take a brillo pad/steel wool and scrape it over the discs.
The get a belt sander and dot he same.
if you're good enogh (and have a torx screw driver - funny hexagonal head or star shaped) you should be able to swap the platters around so tah a different face is on top (the only really acessable area available).
Then burn it. Bleach it.
and place beside tghe magnet while it's on and pass a fluctuating signal though it, say from 5-100Hz, at random intervals (ie twiddle the knob on the SG).
Repeat the burning and scraping process, now and again moving a powerful magnet over the disk suufaces.
I'd serisouly have doubts if much of anything could be recovered.
The only problem with mordern discs is because oftheir great storage density even a relatively small bit of drive can contain quite alot of information.

Have fun, post pics

Lump

Use a magnet, thats how all digital media is erased. they use them in production companies for erasing digital tapes... and also for clearing hard-drives. Or beat shíte out of it.


John

Kali

Originally posted by longword
There are dedicated scrubbing programs out there that will write a series of patterns to the disk several times. That's the only way to be sure.

yep.. Norton Tools comes with such a tool. There is a proper standardised pattern for real "free space" on a hard drive, but even that is breakable but then again it only applies to very old hard drives.

In my attempt to find the proper pattern i came across this discussion, and as much as I hate slashdot it could be interesting for readers of this thread:
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/01/02/21/1752256.shtml

I noticed this quote though:

Apparently, the magnetic field on the disc stores an imprint of the last dozen or so writes

so your not safe unless you destroy the thing thoroughly,
and anyway.. just how much dodgy porn do you have on it?

po0k

no wait......this thread should be on HW tweaking boards

Quickest way to detroy it would be to overclock the bítch to 1billion rpm and run it continously with no cooling while doing hdd intensive database work.

/|/)etal)-|ead

i read an interesting hacker text file ages ago, and it recommended buying a second-hand microwave, tearing out the platters and nuking 'em. Probably only if you're really
paranoid though

p.s. do not hold me responsible for any fires/collateral damage/radioactive contamination etc.

When I found the cd-type things, I just bashed them a few times with a lump hammer, dented them and bent them, so I presume that's grand ( i broke the lump hammer during this process!)

And no, there wasn't porn on them, just personal stuff that I couldn't format (the computer it was on ****ed up), like addresses, my bank details, etc. I didn't want people reading that stuff.

Thanks for the responses, all.

spooky donkey

well why dident you just put the drive into another pc and format it them.

Could have got some use out of then, un less it was an 80 meg drive or something not worth recycling!

po0k

throw it into a furnace.

TacT

As has been mentioned the magnet technique is the simplest way to go. How about a dos debug script to write zero's to the disk? I have one at home that I use before I format to make sure no junk is left behind for a clean install...

williamb

Deleting data from a hard disk so it can never be recovered is extremely hard. The US Department of Defence has a software algorithm involving overwriting the data with specific patterns of cryptographically strong random data, which Norton among others claims to implement (although several of the commercial implementations have been found to be incorrect).

In any event. the NSA specifies that at the highest security classifications, when a PC reaches it's end of life it's hard disk, processor and RAM are thrown into the core of a nuclear reactor..that's how much they trust the software algorithm. (Processor and RAM are because of hysteresis effects possibly causing memory persistence, particularly of cryptographic keys..not usually an issue).

I usually advise people to take the hard disk apart, rub the platters with a magnet and then throw the platters away at some arbitrary location (city centre rubbish bin, into the sea).. but then I'm deeply paranoid.

/|/)etal)-|ead

All of this is probably a bit extreme though unless you're Gary Glitter or some extreme cracker with the FBI after you or something lol

Ryo Hazuki

You seem to be oblivious to the fact you may be helping some sort of sick child picture merchant. (no offence)

You will get yours in hell....?

Gerry

Look, we don't know what he has on the disk, and it isn't the point. Is it ok to make any slight you want against a person, and then tack on (no offence) to the end of it? No, it just makes you look stupid.