destroying old HDs
Jeff
I wish to get rid of ancient PCs in my basement. I'm talking of 386 and 486
PCs! Most of them no longer have working monitors so I cannot fire them up
to wipe their HDs. I can of course remove the HDs but I do not really want
to end up with a bunch of HDs. So, how does one destroy at least the data on
these hard drives?
I've looked at one of them and the platters on this old HD are so strong
there is no way to destroy more than the top one using a hammer. Will a
magnet erase them securely? Where would one find such a magnet?
Is there some other way or ideas?
Thanks.
Jeff
Brian Cryer
news:Vjsrh.3113$lc5...@newsfe20.lga...
How sensitive is the data on them? I ask because if you've taken the disk
apart to get at the platters its very unlikely that anyone would go to the
trouble of trying to put back together the disk. Hit the platters with a
disk and I would have thought that would make it almost impossible
(certainly impractical) for anyone to ever retrieve the data on them. All
you need to do is to dent the platter to make it (virtually) unreadable.
Alternately, and this is the longer less fun approach, plug each one in turn
into a working pc and reformat them. Assuming they are IDE disks you can get
an IDE to USB "thingy" which will let you plug a disk in via the USB port
which would make it more convenient.
I've no experience of using a magnet to erase a disk. I would have thought
that the case would normally provide reasonably good protection against
that. I recall watching a tv program a while back on urban myths where they
tried to erase the magnetic stripe on a credit card, and the conclusion was
that it was quite difficult. If you take the disk apart to remove the casing
to get at the disks to have any chance of erasing the contents, I'd be more
inclined to hit the platters with a big hammer.
> Is there some other way or ideas?
Sorry, I know I'm advocating a very low tech solution where it feels like
there should be a good high tech one. I have a few disks on my desk waiting
for me to get round to formatting them, so I'd be interested to know if
anyone else has other ideas.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian
Jeff
"Brian Cryer" <brian...@127.0.0.1.ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:1PednYqLLrAJwjLY...@pipex.net...
Thanks for the reply. I was not aware of the possibility of having a gadget
that would connect a IDE drive to a USB. I wonder if that exists
considering that an IDE drive needs those three connections (power, and the
other 2). That would be the most convenient because I could then use a
software wipe utility to wipe them (reformatting does not provide real
security).
The info not state security but I would not want it in the wrong hands.
Thanks.
Jeff
Brian Cryer
>
> "Brian Cryer" <brian...@127.0.0.1.ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> news:1PednYqLLrAJwjLY...@pipex.net...
>> "Jeff" <Will...@naol.com> wrote in message
>> news:Vjsrh.3113$lc5...@newsfe20.lga...
<snip>
> Thanks for the reply. I was not aware of the possibility of having a
> gadget that would connect a IDE drive to a USB. I wonder if that exists
> considering that an IDE drive needs those three connections (power, and
> the other 2). That would be the most convenient because I could then use a
> software wipe utility to wipe them (reformatting does not provide real
> security).
I assume you mean two connections: power and ribbon cable.
The IDE to USB device that I have has a separate power supply to power the
disk. So you plug power and ide2usb thingy into the disk. My one seems fussy
whether the disk is set to master or slave - I always seem to get it the
wrong way round to start with.
I got mine off ebay, but I'm sure some retailers must stock them too.
> The info not state security but I would not want it in the wrong hands.
>
> Thanks.
Glad to help.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian
l...@abcrecycling.com
> PCs! Most of them no longer have working monitors so I cannot fire them up
Really the best way to deal with this is get a lowlevel formating
program from somewhere. The application PowerMax is excellent for
this, its from Maxtor and is free, but I have not seen it recent which
I think is due to the merger with Seagate. There is a nice program
called the UltimateCD, which is a bootable CD. On that utility cd
(which is free to download but does require you to compile it, which
takes about 15 minutes), there are a few programs that will write zero
over the entire drive. Effectively lowlevel formating the drive.
Les
leew
data? Some of the basic stuff will make it unavailable in general, but
if someone really wanted access to it, they could still recover it.
In general, if I have sensitive data on a system, I would use a tool
like Darik's Boot and Nuke (dban) to boot a system and wipe the drive.
http://dban.sourceforge.net/ - then I would use multiple passes and
write junk to the disk (as the program does). Depending on the size and
speed of the drive, this could take hours per disk.
As mentioned, you can remove the hard drives and attach them via USB to
other systems. I just bought a USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE device for about $20
at www.newegg.com that support IDE (laptop and desktop) as well as SATA
drives.
Note, formatting and deleting partitions using FDISK are really very
basic ways and if someone wanted to see what you had, it wouldn't be
difficult to restore that information.
-Lee