The Indestructible Hard Drive

[rhinefire]

I am trashing an old Dell laptop and found sections of it were too hard to run a drill through. Even striking it with a steel hammer did not break the disks. Finally I drilled through a spot and hit the disks shattering them. One spot was so hard it dulled the drill. It must be titanium of through hardened stainless. Not sure why Dell would make it so hard to bust up the disks. I put a magnet on the hard drive after removing it thinking that would destroy the data.

 

[SenorXm/Sirius]

Magnet should work..

 

[ASHES]

After that, you could submerge it in saltwater for 6 months, should do the trick.

Or thermite through the disks.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

I am trashing an old Dell laptop and found sections of it were too hard to run a drill through. Even striking it with a steel hammer did not break the disks. Finally I drilled through a spot and hit the disks shattering them. One spot was so hard it dulled the drill. It must be titanium of through hardened stainless. Not sure why Dell would make it so hard to bust up the disks. I put a magnet on the hard drive after removing it thinking that would destroy the data.

If I want to render an old hard drive useless I run a program called R-Studio that writes zeroes to the disk.
I just drop the drive into a hard drive toaster (pic) and run the software and come back the next morning and it's done.
I also have a couple of cheap dongles for older drives that use the older connectors.
R-Studio is also excellent for data recovery, its main purpose. It has saved my bacon countless times on projects when HDD disaster has struck.



If you have written zeroes, the data can't be recovered, and if someone wants a free hard drive, I welcome them to knock themselves out but they won't find my data on there anymore.

 

[Helix]

Put something on it that you never want to lose, and only put it on that one hard drive.

 

[Mr Person]

I am trashing an old Dell laptop and found sections of it were too hard to run a drill through. Even striking it with a steel hammer did not break the disks. Finally I drilled through a spot and hit the disks shattering them. One spot was so hard it dulled the drill. It must be titanium of through hardened stainless. Not sure why Dell would make it so hard to bust up the disks. I put a magnet on the hard drive after removing it thinking that would destroy the data.

I've still got my old Power Mac G5's drive sitting in a box. I gotta get around to it. And I've gotta rip on out of a busted 2013 imac.

Magnet should work..

Well yeah, but if you feel you need to erase the data, you need to be able to calculate how powerful a magnet you'll need to wipe the disk clean through whatever encases it, then afford whatever set-up it is.

(If a cheap magnet would still work, my comment is silly)

 

[Loulit01]

I recommend an oxy-acetylene torch. Or just ask a teenager. He'll look at you like you're stupid and do a flawless job in 3.5 minutes.

 

[rhinefire]

I've still got my old Power Mac G5's drive sitting in a box. I gotta get around to it. And I've gotta rip on out of a busted 2013 imac.



Well yeah, but if you feel you need to erase the data, you need to be able to calculate how powerful a magnet you'll need to wipe the disk clean through whatever encases it, then afford whatever set-up it is.

(If a cheap magnet would still work, my comment is silly)

I believe the magnet I used is not powerful enough but it is not a refrigerator magnet. Right now I am satisfied I shattered the hard drive because shaking it you can hear all the fragments moving.

 

[Peter]

Just instal the Amiga OS on it as that'll completely stump any whizkids who try and decode it.

 

[jmotivator]

I am trashing an old Dell laptop and found sections of it were too hard to run a drill through. Even striking it with a steel hammer did not break the disks. Finally I drilled through a spot and hit the disks shattering them. One spot was so hard it dulled the drill. It must be titanium of through hardened stainless. Not sure why Dell would make it so hard to bust up the disks. I put a magnet on the hard drive after removing it thinking that would destroy the data.

The reason some parts of the disk are so tough is because they were built to sustain millions to a billion physical operations within a 10 year life cycle. Even a cheap HDD will require the reader head to move 50-100+ times per second on read operations, with each operation needing to find it's microscopic mark as i travels around at 7200rpm. Even then, you will notice that an HDD gets slower over time because even with high grade materials the precision drops off and the drive will have to do a lot of rereads when the reader misses the mark.

For that kind of precision long term you need a very tough, high tensile material that won't bend or deform under that load.

As a career data engineer I'm always a bit sad when I have to dispose of beautiful old hardware like that. The amount of physical and material engineering that went into those old HDDs is mind boggling.

Tape Drives, on the other hand, leave me fantasizing about taking a flamethrower to them while I laugh manically. I'm long enough in this industry to have a personal vendetta against tape drives...