Removing A Hard Drive From A Laptop

[Wiggs Dannyboy]

I have an old laptop that I want to toss, but don't want to leave the hard drive in it. Is it easy to take out a hard drive from a laptop? It is a Dell if that makes responding easier.

Also, what should I do to the hard drive once I get it out of the computer to make it unreadable? Can I just hit it with a hammer a few times?

 

[boho]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/261702/how_to_securely_erase_your_hard_drive.html

 

[Stoner4Life]

I take target practice on my old computers, I've got friends that go crazy knowing I'm shooting up components they could scavenge from my PCs, life in the country.

of all the forensic type TV shows I've watched I've NEVER seen them claim to have recovered any info from a ventilated hard drive.

 

[burns1n209]

easy to take out, usually 1 small screw that opens up a plate on the bottom of laptop. Usually has a little hard drive symbol next to the screw. The HD usually just pulls out by a tab, with the possibilty of 1 screw holding it down..

 

[Chillb]

Most laptop hard drives have glass disks inside the drive itself. One nice solid smack will shatter those internal glass disks rendering them 100% useless.

Peace,
chillb

 

[Hydro-Soil]

I prefer 9mm or .45cal for the high frequency 'shock' they deliver.

PULL!

Stay Safe!

 

[OldSSSCGuy]

Most laptop hard drives have glass disks inside the drive itself. One nice solid smack will shatter those internal glass disks rendering them 100% useless.

Peace,
chillb

Sorry Chillb, but that is not true. Even if you drill a hole in the drive it -theoretically- still has recoverable data. IBM/Hitachi drives are often use glass disks, but aluminized ceramics are just as common. Laptop drives are normally made with much more attention to shock and vibration resistance too. Unless you physically take those platters out of the drive case and grind or etch each one of them - they will contain fragments of data which are definitely recoverable. You'd be surprised how durable a hard drive can be, especially a small format laptop drive.

All depends on how dangerous the content of the disc is. Most of the time "wiping" a disk is all you need if the drive still physically works. Just Google "wipe hard drive clean" and you'll find a massive collection of free utilities and advice. We used an old free NSA/Navy wiping utility. Nowadays the government will just grind the whole laptop up in a shredder/grinder. A powdered laptop is kinda hard to put back together.

I worked at a company who often retired or replaced drives which contained highly confidential client data. If the drive worked we'd first use a disk wiper to write zeros & ones to all tracks on the drive - then we'd physically take the drive apart and masticate the platters in all sorts of ways. Disk wiping is boring, coming up with ways to creatively destroy drive platters is much more fun. We used firearms, epoxy, heat guns, microwaves, ovens, fireworks, gravel driveways, grinders, sandpaper (the easiest), drills, and standing on them & doing the twist on asphalt. A case of beer and messing up those old drive platters was a monthly tradition. Hell of a lot of fun and not even Agent 007 could have re-birthed a spec of data when we were done. And no way would any of our customer data could ever fall outside our security control.

Most people don't know that almost every commercial/office copier has a hard drive which contains images of pages scanned, sometimes thousands and thousands of them. Even if "erased" you can recover the images easily.

 

[S4703W]

when you extract the hd, then take it apart. theres some really cool neodymium magnets in there and you can also take out the actual disc and just destroy it, scrap it, use it as a mirror w/e

 

[huligun]

What kind of Dell? I need a screen for a Inspiron 1545 (Crazy woman went off on it)


Go online and type your question in google. It will take you to a place where you can get words and pictures to do it.

 

[Chillb]

It'll be broken into pieces and essentially unuseable, glass or ceramic. Can you recover data from a piece of a broken platter, sure, most wouldn't have a clue how to though and I think it was a good solution to dannyboy's question. Good info you posted too scccguy

 

[Wiggs Dannyboy]

Thanks to all who responded...seems like it should be quite simple, but I wanted to get some other's opinions besides what I would find by just googling. So often you find wildly differing info on google results, now I have a better idea generally of the process from folks in the know.

Huligun...I can't remember exactly what Dell laptop it is, if it is the Inspiron 1545 that I have...is that something that you would want? Not sure how I would get it to you, would you have a safe addy for me to send it to?