How To Wipe Your Hard Drive

Future Intelligence ^ | August 10th, 2006 | Peter Warren

[KarlInOhio]

No, installing Windows won't erase the hard disk.

Usually when I need to get rid of them I've been burying hard disks in a shallow grave with a lot of lime. No, wait, that's not hard disks I'm getting rid of. Uh, never mind, forget I posted anything.

[cynwoody]

Can a hard drive, be truly destroyed by an hour or so, in a medium size campfire?

Read about it here.

[A CA Guy]

So a large magnet left on the drive for a while might be the best way to go shy of destroying the drive then?

[kennedy]

I have about 70 mature (30 to 100 year old) pecan trees. Every time we have a thunderstorm I end up dragging several good sized limbs to my burn pile. I pile brush and limbs for 3 to 6 months between burnings. By the time the fire burns down to ashes, the hard drives are reduced to small lumps of melted aluminum.

In most building fires, the PCs get damaged not by the fire but by the water putting out the fire.

[KarlInOhio]

So a large magnet left on the drive for a while might be the best way to go shy of destroying the drive then?

I wouldn't bet on it. There's too much metal in the case to count on the magnetic field wiping out the bits on the platters. Physical destruction is the only way to be sure. The software suggested above to write multiple ones and zeros over your data is good enough unless the CIA thinks you are important enough to rewire your hard disk or look at the platters with an electron microscope.

[kylaka]

Maybe. That's one I can't really answer. I don't know. But I'd be surprised if HD's are suceptable to any but the largest external magnetic sources.

[RunningWolf]

I don't know but I would think so. You don't have to completely obliterate it.

Think Aluminum, I am sure you have seen some big chunks of aluminum burn up in a campfire

It is all about the magnetic traces on the platters and most everyone thinks of it to that end as to wiping those away.

I think of it more as a media issue like magnetic tape or even a CD-Rom. If you get a cassette tape hot the media shrinks and distorts and whatever magnetic traces are on them go away too.

Actually though I have never went that far.

I break off all the random electrical components on the circuit board, and toss it in any garbage bag (after a 1 bit by bit wipe)

[A CA Guy]

Well thanks for the information.

[A CA Guy]

I don't care for myself, but know lots of doctors who have business computers and they are not allowed by law to share patient information.
So far I have all such friends destroy their hard drives since so much potential damage to patients could be had.

[patton]

Well, I just toss mine in the recycle bin. I the CIA wants to go read a few new beer cans, let them.

[A CA Guy]

I've got nothing to hide. I am not a doctor with personal patient information on the HD either.

In my many years of computers, did have one HD fail. An 8 year old IBM thinkpad.

[cynwoody]

Another tale from my mainframe days (mid 80's) ...

We needed more disk space on our computer, so we purchased some used 3380 hard drives. These things came in cabinets the size of double refrigerators. A cabinet held a pair of modules (if memory serves), and each module consisted of two spindles with a common drive mechanism. We're talking a dozen or two gigs for the price of a house (new).

Anyway, the drives were delivered, moved into place, and cabled up by our IBM Customer Engineer. But before we could use them, the needed to be sysgened (configured to the operating system). There was blizzard on, and I didn't want to drive home just yet, so I took on that task.

But first I decided to preview the drives by attaching them to my virtual machine (yes, we had VM back then). They turned out to contain a full set of source code and data tables for a mainframe payroll system that their former owner published (licenses cost a bundle!).


Oh, and then there was the time we got a bunch of magnetic tapes from a new client that held the client's records, which we were being hired to maintain. I noticed a bank sticker on one of the reels. Remembering that the client's previous service provider rented computer time from that bank, I got curious.

I used a utility I had written to force the tape past the double tape marks that demarcated the end of data, partway through the reel. As expected, the next data block was invalid. But there were a whole bunch of clean blocks after that one. It turned out the bank had used the tape as a "print tape", and the residual data was customer checking account statements!

[BobS]

I'm running a RAID U320 system with 5 SCSI 15K RPM Hard Drives. Just because I know how to build it. And there is a computer widow yelling at me to pay more attention to her. Good night.

[Cobra64]

No, installing Windows won't erase the hard disk.

I was not installing Windows. My hard drive stopped functioning. I want to retrieve data.

[jamaly]

BUMP FOR LATER

[BJungNan]

At the price of a new hard drive these days, seems one could just replace the old with the new and solve the problem.

[KarlInOhio]

I was not installing Windows. My hard drive stopped functioning. I want to retrieve data.

Sorry, I was just comparing all those pictures of nukes going off with a Windows installation.

[BJungNan]

Dumb question here: Can a hard drive, be truly destroyed by an hour or so, in a medium size campfire?

I see common sense is your strong suit. Great dumb question. I had the same question.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Out in the shop, I have an acetylene torch that should just about take care of any data I need destroyed.

[BJungNan]

Ok, then I will take the disk out of the disk drive, then little by little, I will break off a small piece and put it in the trash. I will do this each week until small piece by small piece and week after week I have slowly disposed of the disk.

A campfire sounded a whole lot easier but you doused that hope with your article. Thanks for the link on an interesting read.