Laptop Hard Drive Disposal

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by LauraR, Aug 3, 2016.

  1. LauraR

    LauraR MajorGeeks Super-Duper Administrator Staff Member

    I have a couple of hard drives from laptops that I took out before recycling. It's been so long ago that I can't remember if I wiped them prior to taking them out.

    What's the best way to be sure that no one can access them so I can throw them in the garbage...or whatever?

    I don't want to connect them to anything. Can I just smash them apart with a hammer (which could be really fun) or something?
     
  2. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Drill, hammer, or both. Protective clothing and eye wear needed, a vise might be useful, or some sacking to cover them/contain the fragments.

    Apart from the safety aspect, concentrate on accessing and then destroying the internal platters.

    Time lapse video of the action is optional.

    Ooh, book a trip to a shooting range... ?
     
    LauraR likes this.
  3. LauraR

    LauraR MajorGeeks Super-Duper Administrator Staff Member

    Awesome. Thanks!

    Oooooo...that might be fun, actually. I don't think it would be smart (or safe) for me to use a drill, but a hammer could be cool.
     
  4. joffa

    joffa Major Geek's Official Birthday Announcer

    If you know someone with a drill press (vertical drill) then a couple of 6mm holes drilled right through the HDD will do the trick and of course safety glasses are essential ;)
    If you want some very strong neodymium magnets there are some magnets inside each HDD and there are plenty of You Tube videos to show removal.:cool:
    Here is one
    Once the magnets are removed the disk is as good as unreadable ;)
    Have fun ;):cool:
     
  5. plodr

    plodr Major Geek Super Extraordinaire

    My husband and I took old hard drives apart. The platters are metal which I scratched thoroughly with a key before he dropped them off at a metal scrap site.
    The added bonus when taking them apart is that we got very powerful magnets to use. He keeps them on the side of the fridge in the garage. Very handy when he needs a magnet to pick up parts in the garage.
    If I'm outside and need to find something this magnet is way better than the tiny telescoping one on the end of my tool.
     
  6. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Already said, but if we cannot run a decent "wipe" program on drives, we drill holes through them too.
     
  7. LauraR

    LauraR MajorGeeks Super-Duper Administrator Staff Member

    Thanks all. I'll let you know whether I use a hammer or a drill. ;)
     
  8. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    HDs are really tough. You would need a really REALLY big hammer to ensure all the platters inside were destroyed.
     
  9. joffa

    joffa Major Geek's Official Birthday Announcer

    +1 to Digerati :):cool:
    drilling is the easier option IMHO. A drill press is easiest because you have the leverage from the drill press handle and also the HDD can sit on its table so you don't really have to clamp it.
    Lots of home handymen have these
    [​IMG]
     
  10. mdonah

    mdonah Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Something else that would work is a Bulk Tape Eraser — no drilling or hammering required.
     
  11. the mekanic

    the mekanic Major Mekanical Geek

  12. Imandy Mann

    Imandy Mann MajorGeekolicious

    Here's what I trust -

    Dewalt-DCS374B_1.jpg
     
  13. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    These don't really work because hard drive cases are purposely shielded just to prevent magnetic interference from destroying data.

    Years ago, I tried many things, including a 16lb double jack hammer, CRT degaussing coils, bulk tape eraser we used on our ATC Control Tower 40 channel tapes . I even set a 10lb speaker magnet on an old drive and left it there for several days and much of the data was still retrievable.

    This was when we decided the only solution was to drill holes through the drive, or buy an expensive commercial hard drive "shredder" (which the company eventually did). Of course this is extreme and way beyond what most home users need. But these drives contained very sensitive information folks with very deep pockets would not mind spending the time and resources on to recover any residual data.

    That only works if the drive is readable - and that means your computer must be able to support that interface too. I note many motherboards today don't even come with EIDE/PATA drive interfaces. So you would need a legacy drive enclosure, docking station, or adapter just to read the drive.

    Fortunately, for the vast majority of users, we are really only talking about personal information we want to protect. Also fortunate, most bad guys are strictly lazy opportunists - they look for "easy pickings". It costs a lot of time and money to professionally and "forensically" retrieve data from a wiped or physically damaged drive. Drilling a couple holes is enough to deter just about any bad guy. And no government agency is going to attempt retrieval unless you are a specific target. In which case, I don't want to know you, or be anywhere around you! ;)
     
  14. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    *writable* ?
     
  15. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Oops! Right! Err... write. ??? Actually, both, it must be able to write and read.

    You cannot write to a drive if you cannot read the file tables first. And when writing to a drive, the interface creates a checksum, then reads that storage location and compares checksums.
     
  16. LauraR

    LauraR MajorGeeks Super-Duper Administrator Staff Member

    Ahhh! lol...this sounds more difficult than I thought it would be. Thanks for everyone's input. I just want to take a hammer to it, but sounds like that might not be an option. I don't know that we have a drill that would do the job.

    They may just stay in my drawer unless I can find a sledgehammer.
     
  17. mdonah

    mdonah Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Wipe them with DBAN if you can and donate them. I was in a nursing home for two months and they had a donated computer that ran Windows 2000. A place like that might be able to use one or more.
     
  18. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Often the underside of the drive is made from a more brittle, perhaps cast, metal than the upper side. I'd remove the electronics board and try attacking that ;)
     
  19. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    I have a hard drive docking station like this we use here. They have models for EIDE or both EIDE and SATA. These are really nice and convenient if you need to test or wipe many drives.

    A much cheaper option would be to use a USB to SATA/EIDE adapter. Just plug them in and use DBAN, CCleaner's Drive Wiper (my current favorite), or Eraser and be good to go. Of course these all assume the drive is still functioning.
     
    JonahWales likes this.
  20. joffa

    joffa Major Geek's Official Birthday Announcer

    Hey Laura, if you unscrew the top from the drive and damage the heads then scratch or bend the platters with a screwdriver then nobody is going to go to the trouble of fixing them to read your files. BTW the heads are what gets levered out with the screwdriver in the video that I posted earlier. Unscrewing the top requires the least amount of tools and if it has weird looking screws you can usually find a screwdriver that fits well enough to undo the screws as you won't be worried if they get damaged just so long as they can be undone ;)

    Just destroying the printed circuit board won't render the drive unreadable just much more difficult to read as they would need to find another similar drive and then simply swap over its circuit board. I have done this many times when a drive containing important data has had a circuit board failure and in most cases I have been able to get the data back off the drive.
    Good luck :cool:
     
    Imandy Mann likes this.
  21. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    And a professional forensics lab (like Abby's) ;) can remove the platters and analyze them individually, then reassemble the data. This is a very tedious and expensive process that requires sophisticated equipment and a great deal of expertise. This is why data recovery services can cost many $100s or even $1000s. It is also why most bad guys will not bother if they see a drive is unreadable or has been "wiped". And those forensic recovery costs are why keeping current backups of the data we don't want lost is so important.
     
  22. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    (Joffa, I wasn't suggesting wrecking the controller 'board, only removing it before laying the hammer into the underbelly of the HDD, working 'boards can have a $$ value, too)
     
    Imandy Mann likes this.
  23. LauraR

    LauraR MajorGeeks Super-Duper Administrator Staff Member

    These are just sitting in my drawer. They will never be attached to anything again and I have no idea if they are even functioning, so the option of wiping them is not there. Honestly, I probably did already, but I can't remember since they've been there so long.
     
  24. joffa

    joffa Major Geek's Official Birthday Announcer

    Got it. Just destroying the board wouldn't guarantee the drive unreadable. Warped or scratched platters I don't even look at and presume others would also quickly lose interest. I guess if you put your back into it with a heavy sledgehammer or even better a log splitter on the platter end you could deform it enough to discourage any further inspection.

    In my previous R & D job, my department had a scanning electron microscope amongst a heap of other very sophisticated (read expensive) electronic hardware and firmware data analysis test gear and we have played with many interesting things.......often in the spirit of advancing science and sometimes just because we can....... and also to prove whether our electronic products could possibly be hacked or compromised by a third party. We often pulled hard drives apart and put them back together again and they nearly always worked. My department didn't have a proper clean room so the hard drives we opened up (even though it was in our clean electronics lab) would still be rendered unreliable although they still would usually work for a few months.
     
  25. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Then I would get one of those cheap USB to drive adapters I linked to above. They are simple and offer reassurance you've left nothing on them. Then take the drives and any other old electronics to an electronics recycling center. For things like drives, they pay you by the pound and you may get enough to pay for that adapter. Plus, you get them out of your junk drawer and these recycling centers dispose of them properly keeping the hazardous materials out of land fills.
     
  26. Eldon

    Eldon Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Now where's Fred_G when you need him?
    Just ask a police officer or a gun owner to put a bullet or three through the HDD.
    Of course this should be done in a legal & responsible manner.
     
    LauraR likes this.
  27. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Is there a legal and responsible manner for shooting holes in a hard drive? ;)

    Eye protection is recommended.
     
  28. Eezak

    Eezak Staff Sergeant

    As other posters suggested, do wear safety goggles to protect your eyes whatever method you use and I'd suggest some gloves also to protect fingers and hands when doing any of the procedures shown. Hard drives (and other computer hardware) often use weird screws that can't be removed with standard flat or phillips screw drivers. But a good hardware store should have a multi-bit screwdriver that will come in handy for other work around the house. Take a drive in with your to the hardware store so they can take a look at the screw heads and see just what sort of driver you'll need to remove it.

    I went to youtube and searched "how to destroy a hard drive". There are quite a few videos with narration. I thought these 3 were good "show and tell ways to destroy hard drives. (All of these videoss show standard desktop computer drives, but I imagine these methods should apply to laptop drives also (particularly the "quick and dirty" method :D ).

    1) Quick and dirty (using a regular clawhead hammer):
    2) Disassemble drive and ruin platters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiMFQhSpms8#t=9.038644
    3) More detailed explanation of disassembling method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gweIJ6RtPs

    The fellow who made the third video listed here has a bit of an accent, but I found him easy to understand except for an occasional mumble. He mentions a few things that the second video shows, but doesn't really emphasize -- e.g. when disassembling there are often one or more screws "hidden" beneath the sticker that most hd's have on their top side.

    In addition to the three videos I listed above there are a variety of other related videos -- e.g. recovering precious metals from hard drives (gold and platinum). I think most of the hazardous material used in making hard drives is contained in the circuit boards attached to them. If you can remove that then you can dispose of it according to local regulations.

    Hope this is some help. There used to be a couple of guys who would shoot up (we're talking high powered hunting rifles) computers/hardware) and send you a "computer snuff film" showing the damage, but I did a search and couldn't find them.

    You can also find businesses on the internet that will destroy and/or recycle computer hardware but who ya gonna trust?

    Someone here at MG should make this a project and post their own video showing how to disassemble a HD and scratch up the platters (breaking some platters may be too difficult and sharp pieces may fly everywhere when it shatters). So, if you try to actually break the platters DO WEAR SAFETY GLASSES/GOGGLES. Sorry for shouting but I can see eight year olds reading this who can't wait to grab dad's old hard drive and beat the .... out of it if they can get it open.

    I've got a couple old drives in a closet and I think it's time to "autopsy" them and save a few shiny bits and properly dispose of the rest.
     
    LauraR likes this.
  29. Eezak

    Eezak Staff Sergeant

    Actually, some of the linked videos I posted above in this thread do, in fact, show laptop hard drives being destroyed (e.g. the "quick and dirty" method, I think). I found a youtube video today that says hammering a desktop hard drive may not actually damage the platters (at least visibly). The hammered drive would almost certainly not work after being re-installed in a computer, but I think the point is that if the information contained on the drive is something exceptionally valuable/important it's possible even after hammering, that someone might open the drive, remove the platters, and remount them (as, presumably, a data recovery service might do under some circumstances) and thus succeed in pulling data from the platter(s).

    For most of us the odds of this happening are slim to none. But if you have a drive you want to throw away that might have trade secrets, govt secrets, or a foolproof legal method to beat casino games stored on it, then hammering might not be enough -- but even that assumes that someone might have an inkling of there being info on your old drive worth a great deal of time and expertise to recover (or worth paying someone with the requisite skills and equipment to do the job). So realistically, for most of us, this isn't likely to happen.

    Nevertheless, I found it interesting to see that the platters in a desktop (i.e. "5 1/4 inch hard drive") drive aren't necessarily visibly damaged after a, uh, moderate hammering. Skip to the 3 min 22 sec mark to jump right to the demonstration of this shown in the following youtube video:

    My solution: you're going to need a bigger bo....uh, hammer! I use an "engineer's hammer" -- not nearly as big or heavy as a sledge hammer, but a good deal more massive than a regular household claw hammer. Again, if you attempt, please wear safety goggles and work gloves are a good idea too.

    Happy hammering! ;)
     
  30. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    You might want to go back to the start of this thread and get caught up. Days ago in post #8, I said,
    Frankly, I think this topic has run its course. If you cannot run a "wipe" program on the drive, to ensure the data is irretrievable, you need to physically destroy the drive and that is best, and most easily done with a drill press, or via a hard drive shredder.
     
  31. Eezak

    Eezak Staff Sergeant

    I read the entire thread before I posted, but clearly I didn't remember it all. Besides I think a video demonstration makes a bigger, more lasting impression. But yes, we've probably said more than enough by now. :D
     
  32. JonahWales

    JonahWales Staff Sergeant

    is there an adapter i could buy and use mine as external drive?
     
  33. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    I know with long threads, it is hard to read through them to get caught up when joining in late. But this thread is only 1 page.
    In post #19 above, I included links to a docking station and an adapter. And of course, there are enclosures you can add your own drive too.
     
    JonahWales likes this.
  34. JonahWales

    JonahWales Staff Sergeant


    can i get this and use it to run the computer?i guess ill read the reviews
     
  35. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    To run the computer? You mean to use as a boot drive? It depends on the computer and if it will let you boot to an external drive.

    But it would be best to start your own thread with that question rather than hijacking this one.
     
    JonahWales likes this.
  36. JonahWales

    JonahWales Staff Sergeant

    lot of people are selling IDE/SATA USB adapters for internal hard drives. However a large amount of these products are using a faulty power connecter. This causes the adapter to fry your hard drive, I saw smoke coming from mine and please check around because there are other reviews on Amazon of this happening. Don't buy this because you may lose everything on your hard drive. Mine was 1TB worth of data gone forever. Please don't risk it and buy something else like an enclosure.
    https://www.amazon.com/Generic-SATA-5-25-Cable-Adapter/dp/B000YJBL78?tag=viglink21137-20


    ???
     
  37. LauraR

    LauraR MajorGeeks Super-Duper Administrator Staff Member

    I just got one of these.

    Any suggestions on a good drive wipe software. I looked at DBAN and want some different suggestions. I had used one before but can't remember what it was.
     
  38. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    CCleaner has an effective wipe feature it calls Drive Wiper. Eraser is an easy and effective program too.
     
    DavidGP likes this.
  39. the mekanic

    the mekanic Major Mekanical Geek

    Chinese garbage. Get something reputable like Apricorn or StarTech.
     
  40. LauraR

    LauraR MajorGeeks Super-Duper Administrator Staff Member

    I got StarTech so not worried about that.

    Thanks. I'll look at those. I have CCleaner installed, but I thought that was for wiping free space.
     
  41. Eldon

    Eldon Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Connect the HDD to the PC and open CCleaner > Tools > Drive Wiper, and then...
    Wipe - Entire Drive (All data will be erased)
    Security - Complex Overwrite (7 passes)
    Drive - Check the box next to Removable Disk
    Click Wipe.
     
    LauraR likes this.
  42. satrow

    satrow Major Geek Extraordinaire

    3 passes should be more than enough, unless the drive is over 20 years old ;)
     
  43. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    One pass is more than enough to thwart the efforts of any but the most determined (and deep pocketed) bad guy who (1) has something personal against you and (2) has reason to believe something on the drive is worth the effort. Those guys are lazy opportunists. One look and they will see nothing there and will know it will take a great deal of time and effort to look deeper just to see if there might be something there worth spending a lot more time and effort to attempt to retrieve.

    This is why legitimate data recovery services often charge $100s (even $1000s) to recover accidently deleted data.

    Again, bad guys are lazy opportunists. They go for the easy score. If they see it has been wiped, they will just toss the drive into the "not worth the effort" pile and move on to the next drive.

    It is important to remember that once a storage location on a hard drive is overwritten with anything (music or video file, image or photo file, Word document, random 1s or 0s), any data that was previously stored in that location can NOT be recovered with any conventional file recovery program, but instead will require the use of complex forensic analysis. This is an expensive and time consuming process that takes considerable expertise too. This is why simply filling up a hard drive with music or video files a couple times does the same thing as a wipe program. Only instead of the magnetic particles on the platters representing random 1s and 0s, the magnetic particles represent bits of a Led Zeppelin song or Harry Potter movie.

    By all means, wipe your drives before discarding them. But unless you have corporate secrets, evidence of your illegal involvement in criminal activity, or classified state secrets on your drives that would attract the attention of law enforcement, foreign spy agencies, or anti-espionage organizations, don't go overboard and waste your time. One pass will do just fine.
     
    LauraR likes this.
  44. LauraR

    LauraR MajorGeeks Super-Duper Administrator Staff Member

    Yeah, I'm not really worried too much about the data on them.

    I'm wiping and then going to figure out how to get rid of them or recycle them. I don't want them around. (Although I may keep one to clone my hard drive if I figure out how to do it, which I'm sure isn't all that hard)
     
  45. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Like I said above, see if you have an electronics recycling center in your area. They may not pay you like mine does for the salvage value of the metals, but they will ensure it is disposed of in safe manner. I am not a tree hugger, but if it is easy to keep hazardous materials out of our landfills and water supplies, I say go for it.

    Even Best Buy will take old drives (from private citizens, not businesses).
     
  46. mdonah

    mdonah Major Geek Extraordinaire

    No, it's not that hard to clone your drive. Just make sure the drive you're cloning to is the same size or larger than the drive you're cloning from.

    I use AOMEI Backupper from Major Geeks for the task. It has the simplest interface of all of the cloning/imaging software at MG's.
     
  47. mjnc

    mjnc MajorGeek

    An interesting thread. Don't know what will happen to all of the drives, but the topic kind of got beat to death.
    LauraR, attach that old drive to one of your posts and see if it gets chewed up. ;)

    Interesting tidbit - good to know.

    This reminded me, I have at least 100 old floppy disks that I'll eventually want to dispose of. Similar problem.
    Mostly old application source code. Copyrighted but otherwise I think no sensitive data. At least twenty years old and obsolete.
    Many are true 5 1/4 inch "floppies" and others are 3.5 inch with hard plastic outer shell.

    Any thoughts / recommendations?
     
  48. plodr

    plodr Major Geek Super Extraordinaire

    We got rid of most 3.5" floppies a few years ago. I loaded the floppies on the computer and used a program to join if a program required 2 or more floppies to install. Then I archived the contents of the floppies on a huge 80GB "portable" Western Digital hard drive.
    I know most of the programs aren't usable but I didn't want to lose them - sentimental value.

    I then formatted the floppies. I didn't use the quick format method.
    You can e-cycle them
    https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/because-you-asked-how-can-i-dispose-of-floppy-disks
     
  49. Eldon

    Eldon Major Geek Extraordinaire

    Use a pair of scissors for the 5.25 inch floppies, and a pair of tinsnips for the 3.5 inch "stiffies", and cut them in 4 pieces.
    Then take them to an e-cycle place.
     
  50. Digerati

    Digerati Major Geek Extraordinaire

    A big 10lb magnet sitting on top of the floppies overnight will take care of them. I have one from an old sub-woofer that works great.

    Short of that, then yeah, cutting them. Heat will also distort them enough to make them unreadable. That from a heat gun or hair dryer is good. You don't want them to actually catch fire because the fumes are not kind to the eyes or lungs.

    5 1/4 inch floppies (because they don't have any metal) can also be run through most paper shredders. Certainly any shredder designed to eat CDs and credit cards can handle them.
     

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