Looking for advice on destroying some old hard drives

#1

I’ve got a handful of old hard drives which I’d like to throw out.

I considered running a shred program on them, but that has taken far too long. I don’t think there’s anything particularly sensitive on them, but I’d rather not landfill/weee-recycle them without being sure any remaining data is unreadable.

Thoughts include:

  • perservering with the shred program
  • pillar drill a hole through the whole thing (I don’t have metal drill induction yet)
  • just weee-recycle and hope for the best
  • pay for a real hard drive shredding service (like this one) but that feels excessive

Any thoughts, or anyone else done similar? Keen to hear other (more viable) options

#2

Beat them to shrapnel size pieces with a sledge hammer, very therapeutic as well as 100% destruction of the data !

Be careful where you do it though, patio slabs are not hard enough for this sort of treatment :slight_smile:

Courty

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#3

Companies buy degausers that are strong electromagnets. not sure how strong it would need to be but a magnate should do the job

#4

easier option is just hit it with a bat though. you need to break the really soft disk inside not the casing

#5

Disassemble them and make art?!!

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#6

Just overwite the entire drive a few times with random number strings, windows command prompt now has this built in

e.g. format : /P:4

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#7

Take them to bits there’s a couple of neodymium magnets in there but work to hold paperwork your fridge door, and then simply hit The Platters with a hammer

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#8

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-securely-recycle-or-dispose-of-your-ssd/ if it’s an SSD, it’s harder. If it’s not, drilling a hole through it should be sufficient

#9

Take the discs out and cut them into pieces with an angle grinderwith a 1m cutting disc for stainless steel. Ifyou have a blowtorch make a scahmotte or veemiculitecorner and heat them re, when anything ferromagnetic is heated the particles in it are mving themselves by earth magnetic field. (Which is also a perfect archeological dating technique for fireplaces )

#10

If you decide that overwrite and disassembly is sufficient, I am collecting the shiny platters to make an art installation.
I would be happy to do the disassembly with you observing if that feels safer.

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#11

I just stick a drill through them. Job done.

#12

Take the discs out and keep them a Christmas tree decoration, so they stay with you.

Fed

#13

If they’re a useful size just DBan them - NSA might be able to recover data (if it’s worth the huge effort)…no one else would

There’s a campaign to stop Google et al needlessly destroying millions of these a year…for no evidence based reason, except that what they are in the habit of doing

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#14

+1 for format them if they’re a useful size. I’ve never heard of anyone recovering data after having them zeroed out and you’d be saving some electronic waste. Plus someone in the maker space might actually want the things.

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#15

2nd this, if you are not even positive they have sensitive data, zero them a few times and let someone reuse them vs. more waste… :evergreen_tree:

#16

Recuva has a feature of overwriting hdds so many times the original data is beyond recovery