Destroying old internal hard drives.

hollydolly said:
here in the UK, I live in a semi rural area... but it means that I still have close neighbors as well as farmland...
Click to expand...
My closest human neighbor is 1/2 a mile away. As for my closest neighbor...the cows don't mind what I do at all as long as I don't try to eat them.
 

  • Like
Reactions: JBR
His Dudeness said:
My closest human neighbor is 1/2 a mile away. As for my closest neighbor...the cows don't mind what I do at all.
Click to expand...
That would be my ideal.....I'd love that.. sadly on this small island with 70 million people, pace is at a premium

My daughter had that in Southern Spain when she lived in the mountains, no near neighbour for over a Kilometre ...and of course no light pollution at night either
 
Nathan said:
Some of the materials would give off some potentially toxic fumes. The PCB board, and plastic components would burn stinky, at best.
Click to expand...
Yes, I remember a similar post/thread maybe a couple months ago... someone suggested an acetylene flame. My reply was if I needed to destroy a h.d., I could apply that, but would choose not to. Noxious fumes, I expect... more so than just cutting carbon steel with the cutting torch.
 
Where I live, there's nobody to care what I burn as long as I don't set the landscape and crops on fire.
I've never ran across a hard drive without screws, so I don't have any advice on that end.
I take them apart, save the magnets, then gouge and bend the discs.
I'm the IT guy where I work, so over the years I've probably torn down a few hundred.
Make sure the disc inside is destroyed, the rest doesn't really matter. (If a professional really wanted to see your info.)
 
CLAMP ONE end of it in a bench vise real tight crushing the [power receptacles] and then totally crush it with a sledge leaving junk, Sweep it up, put it in a plastic baggy and dispose of it.
some how it double posted 45 minutes apart. Haha. Must be important step of freedom.

You know the plastic baggy is for the dump Rats, so when they soak up all that bits of knowledge in there they are too drunk of rum to escape it.
 
My one instructor for a computer class at the local college in the 90s who was a civilian contractor for the Air Force said that they used a sledge hammer. That's the way I've always done it & it works well.
 
Tommy said:
Since the mid '90s I've disposed of three outdated desktop computers. In each case I dutifully removed the internal hard drives, saving their destruction for someday in the future. Well, "someday" finally came. I've gone online to learn how to permanently destroy them with little success, so I'm asking for advice.

All three are what I assume to be standard Seagate hard drives. They contain financial, medical, and other personal data that I don't really want to be just floating around somewhere. Internet instructions seem to fall into one of two categories. Either:

1. Use a program designed to to overwrite the drive multiple times. Too late for that; those computers are long gone. I bought a USB adapter to try to access them from my current computer but it couldn't even find the drives.

2. Disassemble the drive and . . . Hmmm - therein lies the problem. These instructions start by telling me to remove all of the screws to open up the drive. None of my drives are held together with normal screws, but rather what look like round headed rivets with a small round dimple in the center of the head. I was eventually able to destroy one drive by drilling out the "screws". It took a very loooong time, a lot of muscle, and destroyed two good drill bits to accomplish this. I then removed the metal disk and, with a bench vise and a big hammer, finally managed to bend it to a point where I consider it safe to throw away. I don't really want to have to do that again for the other two.

So, any suggestions from anyone on the forum? The only other suggestion I've found was to shoot holes through it with a high-powered rifle . . . probably not the best solution. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Drill some holes into them, then soak them in vinegar for a week or more.?
 
Last edited:
Cornhusker said:
I've never ran across a hard drive without screws, so I don't have any advice on that end.
Click to expand...

First, a big "thank you" to all who offered suggestions here. :) You're the best!!! (y)

@Cornhusker's comment prompted me to go back and take a long, hard (highly magnified) look at the remaining two cases. Low and behold, they are indeed held together with tiny torx screws. I was able to remove some and am currently waiting for a smaller size torx screwdriver to remove the rest.

Once removed, I still plan to bend the disks themselves. There may be "shatterable" disks out there, but these aren't them.

IMG_2306.JPG
For the first drive, this is the result of a LOT of effort using a bench vise and a heavy hammer. The disk is made of some sort of non-magnetic, very VERY strong metal.

ETA: I originally wrote that there are Seagate drives - they're actually made by Western Electric.
 
I've only disposed of one so far. Beat it with a 3 lbs drilling hammer till it sounded like a Maraca when you shook it. Then shot it with a .357 Magnum in my backyard on the night of the 4th of July so that the sound would blend in with all the fireworks.
 
The disks are pretty. The last one I destroyed had a glass disk. In the blurry reflection you can see a few of the magnets stuck on my tool box. They're really strong.

image.png

Back in the 70's I was a QA engineer at a company that made hard drives. They were the size of a refrigerator.
 
Darn hard drives. I have 3 waiting for me to destroy them.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top