Disposing of hard drives
 

You'd think people would be wiser by now, but apparently many are still carelessly disposing of their PCs full of personal information. Personally I'd always use one of those utilities that overwrites the whole hard drive.

In theory, I suppose extracting the actual disk and abrading it on a linisher might be more secure, but extracting the disk is easier said than done; I tried it once and the darned thing did its very best to stay in place!

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

There are plenty of utilities for overwriting data. Problem is that many computer users aren't that aware of how things work internally on their PC. After all delete does imply bye bye doesn't it.

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

I find the best remedy is a hammer, or as we did at a a place i worked, drop them 5 floors onto concrete..

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

Agreed. :tu: I've also dismantled and rubbed the plates with sandpaper.

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

Yep I find that the best way is to get in there with a screwdriver and a pair of scissors and completly destroy the drive.

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

Best way is fire, works a treat with all forms of information, loads of fuel and a lighter, O and stand back

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

Or just keep the hard drive, and get rid of the rest of it !

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i take them apart, play with the magnets (until i get careless and they shatter!) and use the platters as coasters :D

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

Ditto, as was pointed out on BBC 1 News this morning :)

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

I'm not the only one that does it then :D

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

i seen a progamme on tv last week, where people who threw there computers away on places like the tip an alike.
there computers ended up in nigeria where the were broken down and sold on again.
there were gangs that bought the drives and took personell infomation off them, and then used this infomation to get loans and stuff.
its was interesting and shocking to the amount of money they could make by this.
it was around 15 pounds for 10 hard drives an they made somethimg stupid like 10,000 per drive on average, some were into the million figures:Yikes:

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

We use DBan at work - http://dban.sourceforge.net/ - you can get it as a bootcd or boot floppy image.

It has DoD and Gutmann wiping methods which in theory should be able to clear hard drives of all data. We tried it at work and only found files using a partition undelete program that should have been there such as formatting information etc.

I dont know how truely good they are against Professional Expensive undelete methods but I would have thought if they are using DoD methods it would be fairly good!

Oh yeah and its FREE!

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

i have a habit of dismantling them / destroying anything visable or just bashing it :)


Normal reason for throw away of hdd is due to failure tho so not much of a prob for me :)

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

Problem is that you think it's going to be easy but getting into the actual Hard Drive casing is blooming hard. I spent ages getting the plates out.

Re: Disposing of hard drives
 

Has anyone tried drilling a hole though a hard drive? That should knacker it.