Slicking a Hard Drive

[Jeremy Neuner]

Hey Geeks,

We're finally getting rid of the HP desktop that we've had since 2002.  We've dutifully backed up all the files and we'll properly dispose of it at an e-waste recycling center (Gray Bears is a great spot for that, if you've got e-waste to get rid of).  But I'm wondering if there's a reliable way to ensure that the hard drive is completely slicked of all its data.  Should we just re-format it?  Pound it into dust with a sledgehammer?  Or........

Thanks in advance for any tips-n-tricks,

Cheers,
Jeremy

 

Jeremy Neuner
Co-Founder & CEO
NextSpace Coworking + Innovation, Inc.
831-420-0710
www.NextSpace.us

[Chris Frost]

Physical destruction is tried and true, but if you want it to be usable again I'd suggest DBAN http://www.dban.org/ it's a lightweight bootdisk that has tools (easy to use) that will wipe the drive to better than DoD spec.

~Frost~

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[Graham Freeman]

My two fav methods:

* Drives that still work:   Download DBAN (http://www.dban.org/), burn to CD, boot from that CD on the system that has the drive you want to erase, let it run for a complete wipe process of 2-3 hours (depending on the speed of the system and wiping method - "quick erase" is actually good enough as long as you let it run completely through.)

* Drives that don't work any longer:   Take it to an e-waste facility that has a drive degausser, and pay them ~$20 to degauss the drive.   This uses a powerful (and cool-sounding) electromagnet to totally demolish your compromising photos of you and Hillary Clinton.  It also erases the drive's firmware, so that it can never be used again, so there's that.

-G

[Jeremy Neuner]

Graham, the fact that you know about my compromising photos with Hillary Clinton is pure proof that I need to find a way to irrevocably destroy the data on this hard drive......

 

Jeremy Neuner
Co-Founder & CEO
NextSpace Coworking + Innovation, Inc.
831-420-0710
www.NextSpace.us

---

From: Graham Freeman <graham....@cernio.com>
To: santacr...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, July 30, 2010 4:32:18 PM
Subject: Re: Slicking a Hard Drive

[reesa_...@sbcglobal.net]

Grey Bears recycles their ewaste with Techcycle3.com
While their is no certifying body on cleaning disk drives - we meet MIL spec and use a patented process so your disks are clean. Go to www.techcycle3.com for a more detailed description of the disk cleaning.
Reesa
Reesa....@techcycle3.com

------Original Message------
From: Jeremy Neuner
Sender: santacr...@googlegroups.com
To: Geeks
ReplyTo: santacr...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Slicking a Hard Drive
Sent: Jul 30, 2010 4:26 PM

Hey Geeks, We're finally getting rid of the HP desktop that we've had since 2002.  We've dutifully backed up all the files and we'll properly dispose of it at an e-waste recycling center (Gray Bears is a great spot for that, if you've got e-waste to get rid of).  But I'm wondering if there's a reliable way to ensure that the hard drive is completely slicked of all its data.  Should we just re-format it?  Pound it into dust with a sledgehammer?  Or........ Thanks in advance for any tips-n-tricks, Cheers, Jeremy   Jeremy Neuner Co-Founder & CEO NextSpace Coworking + Innovation, Inc. 831-420-0710 www.NextSpace.us -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Santa Cruz Geeks" group. To post to this group, send email to santacr...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to santacruzgeek...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/santacruzgeeks?hl=en.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

[John Brewer]

Another vote for DBAN. Simple and effective, assuming your hard drive
is still working.

http://www.dban.org/

--
John Brewer

[Alan Hawrylyshen]

If you have any live CD that will boot and cannot / will not download a new iso image, you can just open up a shell and type

as root:

while :; do dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda bs=8192; done

Let that run overnight.

Will pretty much nuke /dev/hda (assuming that is your harddrive device path -- mostly true)

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Alan Hawrylyshen
a l a n a t p o l y p h a s e d o t c a

[Karsten Wade]

I like the one I read recently where you drill holes through the case then soak it in water for a few days.  Get rust to work for you for a change.  ;-)

Bootable shredders are geek cool, too.