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I must have a dozen or so harddrives that I want to toss but have to wipe off the data first.
What's the fastest way.
How about magnets? I've done the sledgehammer trick.

There's, I believe Dave's something or other software but I believe that would take forever.

There is a link to DBAN in the free software thread.

Understood DBAN takes a long time. Has anyone used it to know how long each drive would take to write over?

Varies depending on the size and speed of the drive.

Best way is a government wipe.

Well actually my preferred method to wipe an old customer HDD to their satisfaction is to burn it with fire. Since the vast majority of the time when someone wants me to dispose of a drive the reason is that the drive has failed and can't be wiped by software. So I open it up and melt down the disks with a mapp gas torch, barring the use of a time machine its pretty unlikely anyone will be able to recover any data from the pool of hot metal that it becomes.

Sledgehammer.

Drill holes through it.

Target practice with .308 rifle

wrap it in detcord.

Grind it to dust between the gears of Mechanus, or crush it to paste between the two layers of Bytopia. Feed it to the corpse of a dead god in the Astral Plane.

Bake it in the oven then try to run it.

Cuda68 wrote:Target practice with .308 rifle

screw that, BARRETT!!! .50

Grendel wrote:Sledgehammer.

The only way.

Not a free solution, but you can use Norton Ghost to do a wipe. Ghost solution Suite has an Erase Machine Task, or you can manually run GDISK.

I vote for one of the physical destruction methods listed, simply because they are generally more entertaining than the push a button and watch the computer go methods.

What about solid state drives? When you erase something on that, like with the rm command, it's irretrievable, right?

Isaac wrote:What about solid state drives? When you erase something on that, like with the rm command, it's irretrievable, right?

rm is the unix/linux remove command? What OS you runnin?

Isaac wrote:What about solid state drives? When you erase something on that, like with the rm command, it's irretrievable, right?

Solid state or spinning disk, it doesn't matter. The rm command only removes the filesystem marker to the data. The data is still there until it is written over again by a write. You need to fill the disk with something (random data or all 0s) to erase everything.

I was just giving rm as an example to indicate that I wasn't talking about the \"recycling bin\". It was added as extra information in the sentence and can be ignored.

edit:
Got my answer, which is basically what Xamindar said.
http://www.flashbackdata.com/blog/?p=6

Almost any delete command, not just rm.

Over writing the files is good way to make it more difficult for people to recover deleted data from your disk. The thing is how much do they want the data. Even after a secure wipe it still maybe possible to get data from the drive by studying the magnetic fields of the platter. The best way to protect your privacy is to encrypt your data from the start.

Xamindar wrote:Almost any delete command, not just rm.

Yes, it was an example.

Wrap copper wire around it and hook the ends of the wire to a car battery for a few seconds.

Wipe out HD by installing Ubunto???????

Would it be safe to put it in the microwave for one second like you can do with CD's?

One second shouldn't blow up or anything, but probably ineffective at actually destroying the data inside (too much shielding, not enough time). A bit longer will be much more effective, but is very likely to start a fire and destroy the microwave.

See also:

Krom wrote:See also:

i LOVE those guys!!

Thinking about drilling holes. One enough or.........

Nope.

Disassemble and making outdoor art with the platters will be more effective.

OK! I'm taking my 23 hard drives apart and then ripping out the platters. How does that sound?

Taking platters out. Now ...bend them, scratch them, run a sander over them......What should I do........How far do I have to go?

Go to the local junk-yard and toss the remains into the trunk of the next car going into the compactor...

Yeah, making a hard drive so it'll never be readable again isn't that complicated. Got a 5-7 pound sledge hammer in your garage/storage?

Set the drive on pavement or concrete or some other hard surface, and bring the hammer down on the platter end of the drive as hard as you can. Unless they are the ceramic type, the platters won't break, but they will bend, and just the contaminants and generally getting crushed by a huge hammer even once should make it so unless someone is prepared to spend tens of thousands of dollars they wont be getting any data off them. Also the shell of a drive will most likely shatter so there is no need to disassemble them ahead of time, they should break into a whole bunch of pieces pretty easily.

If you are really super paranoid and want to be sure, after you are done smashing the platters out of the drive: burn them.

See also:
[youtube]yd_O7-rqcHc[/youtube]

Honestly you'd' think just disassembling the thing in the first place would dissuade the vast majority of data thieves. I'm not sure how many petty crooks would be up for re-mounting platters into a functional drive.

I agree but since theses hd's belonged to friends that are trusting me to destroy their data I want to be sure.

How about a little sandpaper on the platters after removing them?

It probably will be enough, but I don't really know. I would go w/ my original and Kroms recommendation -- sledge hammer. Since you have the platters out, a smaller hammer will probably suffice. Or if you can disassemble the platter stacks into single platters, just disposing them one by one in different locations (eg. by returning a random number of platters to each of your friends for disposal) will most likely do.

Thanks for the posts.

Hey, those platters are surprisingly tough little cookies. They'll take a lot of bending before breaking. Too much of work. I'm going to try the MAPP torch route, or maybe fire up my welder and melt slag holes in them.