Help with Hard Drive

[CaptainTrips]

I think if the water had some salts in it (from your hydro res, lol) it would conduct electricity... even tap water will. Whether tap water would be enough after it dried and you turned it on i dont know. But salt water would, although probably noticable. But scratching up the circuit board is a good idea, but you won't know if it actually did anything unless you do major visable damage...

 

[devilgoob]

MAGNETS DONT WORK....well they do, but youd spend a couple hundred dollars on one that works.

heres how you delete your data: you "zero-out" the harddrive, aka you just write a bunch of zeros onto it...replacing your old files with nothing cept zeros. you have to zero it out and then one it out...write 0s over everything...then 1's. You do that six times.

do you have a floppy drive and a floppy?:
http://www.dban.org/

err this one: http://www.heidi.ie/node/6

hitting it with a bat helps, but youll break the drive. or you could open the harddrive up, then plug her in and watch the head zip around the top and scrape the surface of the disk. thats really fun

 

[SpacedCWBY]

open up the PC's case - really easy, doesn't take a tech savvy type. Pull out the drive, again, not techy. Next, use an extension cord and cut off the female end exposing the black and white wires. Plug the male end into the wall and touch the ends of the wires to the power connectors. It will probably pop your circuit breaker and throw some sparks, nothing deadly though. Just be careful. Throw that bitch back in the pc and put it all back together. If that thing still works it would be a miracle. The data will still be on the platters, but they'd have to go through some pretty expensive recovery in a "clean room" and the platters would have to be moved into another housing. In other words, forget about it being a problem.

Light that bitch up man!!!

Where I work we have to physically destroy old HD's. We take the tops off then bend the platters in half after scratching the shit out of them. But that's messy and pretty obvious. You want stealth. So go up a paragraph and LIGHT THAT BITCH UP!!!!

Have fun.

 

[FreezerBoy]

"zero-out" the harddrive,

As I recall "writing to zero" takes about 35 passes to be truly effective.

 

[O'Doyle Rules]

MAGNETS DONT WORK....well they do, but youd spend a couple hundred dollars on one that works.

heres how you delete your data: you "zero-out" the harddrive, aka you just write a bunch of zeros onto it...replacing your old files with nothing cept zeros. you have to zero it out and then one it out...write 0s over everything...then 1's. You do that six times.

do you have a floppy drive and a floppy?:
http://www.dban.org/

err this one: http://www.heidi.ie/node/6

hitting it with a bat helps, but youll break the drive. or you could open the harddrive up, then plug her in and watch the head zip around the top and scrape the surface of the disk. thats really fun

Dude, I can't see a fucking thing on the monitor!

open up the PC's case - really easy, doesn't take a tech savvy type. Pull out the drive, again, not techy. Next, use an extension cord and cut off the female end exposing the black and white wires. Plug the male end into the wall and touch the ends of the wires to the power connectors. It will probably pop your circuit breaker and throw some sparks, nothing deadly though. Just be careful. Throw that bitch back in the pc and put it all back together. If that thing still works it would be a miracle. The data will still be on the platters, but they'd have to go through some pretty expensive recovery in a "clean room" and the platters would have to be moved into another housing. In other words, forget about it being a problem.

Light that bitch up man!!!

Where I work we have to physically destroy old HD's. We take the tops off then bend the platters in half after scratching the shit out of them. But that's messy and pretty obvious. You want stealth. So go up a paragraph and LIGHT THAT BITCH UP!!!!

Have fun.

Thanks for the hlep bro

 

[devilgoob]

six passes, government grade.

35 if you're crazy lol

dude, dont do what that guy told you, youll ruin the power supply possibly.

try that second one i put up. the first one is for putting on a floppy and booting from the floppy drive.

 

[pHaroaH]

You can unformat and unerase a drive. You need a program to wipe the drive...

http://www.dban.org/

Go to dban and follow their instructions to make a dban cd. Take the old hard drive out of the old computer and swap it with your new one. Boot your new computer with dban cd and wipe the old drive. Swap them back and you are done.

If the hard drives are not compatible (one could be IDE and the other SATA... you'll know if the connectors don't match up) then go to to a computer store and buy a USB IDE/SATA hard drive connector (It should also come with a power supply.) Just follow the instructions the adapter comes with. Hook it up to your computer and then run dban from your computer. Do not boot from dban, or you might wipe your new drive. You have to run dban differently. Read the instructions. Make sure you select the correct drive to wipe.

If this is all too complicated for you then go buy a new cheap drive, swap it out with old one and smash the old one with a hammer. You really shouldn't risk having a professional do it.

EDIT: You can open up the hard drive and scratch the platters on all sides. They'll look like metal cds. That will destroy it. However if someone looks closely they will see punctured stickers where screws are that will indicate the drive was tampered with.

Good luck.

 

[FreezerBoy]

six passes, government grade.

Six passes is grade school. My Mac doesn't even offer that low an option. I forget if the magic number is 35 or 37 or ... fill in the blank. But, even that is recoverable if "they" want it bad enough.

 

[O'Doyle Rules]

Go to dban and follow their instructions to make a dban cd. Take the old hard drive out of the old computer and swap it with your new one. Boot your new computer with dban cd and wipe the old drive. Swap them back and you are done.

If the hard drives are not compatible (one could be IDE and the other SATA... you'll know if the connectors don't match up) then go to to a computer store and buy a USB IDE/SATA hard drive connector (It should also come with a power supply.) Just follow the instructions the adapter comes with. Hook it up to your computer and then run dban from your computer. Do not boot from dban, or you might wipe your new drive. You have to run dban differently. Read the instructions. Make sure you select the correct drive to wipe.

If this is all too complicated for you then go buy a new cheap drive, swap it out with old one and smash the old one with a hammer. You really shouldn't risk having a professional do it.

EDIT: You can open up the hard drive and scratch the platters on all sides. They'll look like metal cds. That will destroy it. However if someone looks closely they will see punctured stickers where screws are that will indicate the drive was tampered with.

Good luck.

way too complicated and i dont want to buy a new one
owner won't open it up and look at harddrive, wouldnt know what they were looking at or for so scratches don't matter
thanks bro

 

[ninfan77]

Agreed w/ the electricity. That was my next suggestion.... short that thing out.

That'll go along with the dead mobo as well.

 

[whyme2]

Have read every post. Reading what you need to do - making assumptions about your skill/knowledge - and the fact that the machine doesn't work now. I would either go with frying the thing like Space cowboy advises, or doing some real damage to the circuit board on the hd. Space cowboys method is advantagous, in that frying it looks just like a lightning strike or a nice(ie bad) power surge. Damaging the circuit board can be seen, if one looks closely.
You could always offer to buy/replace the hard drive. Tell your friend, that their is data you need. This should cost you well under $100, means that you aren't screwing your friend, and will actually benefit your friend, as the new HD, will probably be much larger than the old one.

 

[devilgoob]

oh yea, 35 passes is government grade..sorry.

ya know what!?!?! this is stupid, reformat the harddrive install windows..whatever!

he is not going to try and recover files of your hd.

 

[SoulCoughing]

I ran through this same situation(almost) with my cousin who works as IT for the state. He said the best way to actually do it is to get a drill and go through all the plates on the hd, multiple times. This + magnetism is a sure fire way to never have the hd run again/any information be restored. If you mess up the internals then you are all set. Or you could just have fun and get some thermite.

Stay safe,
SC

 

[Papulz]

mm i second the thermite.. thats even better than the acid i was thinkin.

seriously though... theres probably about 10 things that will work listed here now.

 

[Stay Puft]

I was thinking an ESD discharge.. but you know what?...

I really do like the Idea of just drilling a hole through it. That would certainly be enough to stop all but the most motivated.
BTW-Please make sure you wear safety glasses/gloves and secure the drive in a vise/clamp before drilling. I don't think my HMO would cover this activity!

 

[Karma Withakay]

Reformatting a hard drive does nothing really. All the data is still there. Only after several rewrites does it "go away" With the right forensic tools you can easily pull off data that has been "deleted". Formatting helps a bit, but for a savvy investigator it's of no issue.

Or put the old drive in your new computer as a secondary drive.. pull off the data the owner wants, put it on cd.

If it's of great concern do not hand over that hard drive in any working condition. If they are trying to retrieve files they will likely use a recovery tool which could unearth info you don't want found.

-dh

ps - On the new computer, look at putting all your sensitive files in a TrueCrypt encrypted file system. Super easy to do. It won't keep the NSA out of your pr0n but it will keep 99% of people out of it. I use one for all grow related info. It's not even mounted 24/7, its just there when i need and the rest of the time it looks like a random file.

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=tutorial

Very true. Don't rely on encrypted filesystems, though, because the judge will simply order you to hand over the passphrase or (I believe) you could be held in contempt of the court.

Use DBAN as previously mentioned, or Eraser: http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/

With Eraser you can do things like securely wipe your Recycle Bin, or better yet, securely wipe the empty space on your disk so that previously "deleted" files, including your web browser's cache, will be securely wiped. This is a good thing to do once in a while. It is also free, and open-source with the full source code provided under the GNU GPL license.

 

[CaptainTrips]

Very true. Don't rely on encrypted filesystems, though, because the judge will simply order you to hand over the passphrase or (I believe) you could be held in contempt of the court.

What if the passphrase was on some sort of card/smartcard and it somehow went missing, or better, destroyed?

 

[Karma Withakay]

I'm not a lawyer and have only a vague knowledge of these things... but I would imagine that won't be a good enough excuse, and you would likely face an additional charge of destruction of evidence on top of contempt of court... unless you have a very high priced lawyer.

 

[Stay Puft]

word: Ryobi
If you wanna get industrial... Milwalkeee!

 

[Karma Withakay]

Maybe a Dremel?

But:

...cant just pull the harddrive, would have no explanation for that.