Destroy Your Hard Drives!

[Hatta]

While destruction is not necessary to secure your data(zeroing is sufficient), there's no harm in it. Adaptors to make modern storage devices, from SATA drives to CF cards, IDE compatabile are common and cheap. Vintage hard disks are going to fail sooner or later, so it's better to scrap them now than have a nasty surprise one day.

[kiwilove]

So-called modern (recent) hard drives are not as reliable as you want them to be. I have a 2 terabyte HD, which I use for achival purposes - only to find that a number of the files have bad sectors present, preventing them from being copied/moved to another HD for further archiving...

While the other HD of similar capacity don't seem to have that problem present.

 

Eventually crystal cube storage may show up, which stores even greater capacity one day -- that is solid state?

 

Harvey

[Keatah]

I prefer to buy HDD that are still in production, but are using a lower density configuration. A density that has been on the market. The assembly line needs to be tweaked and refined. But you still have to be careful here because you might get a single-platter version, which is still high-density and thus is as unreliable as a full blown 6TB disk.

 

A crystal with x,y,z laser access would still be solid state storage despite the moving parts. I don't see things going that way for a long long time, if ever. Manufacturers would have a bear of a time with speed and precision of those same lasers. Random access would be horrible. I'm afraid this is an old sci-fi concept that has since been eclipsed by something with better practicality.

 

Instead we have SSD with Flash - which sort of crept up on us as the premier form of crystalline storage. Each cell has nanoscale wires going to and from it, thus no moving parts. QLC is affording us 16 bits per cell capability. Cascading QLC will give us 32 bits per cell and you can expect that in late 2014 or early 2015 at the latest.

 

SSD and Flash are not glamorous, quite boring in fact. But then so is any tech that has been commoditized.

[danny_galaga]

I'm a hard drive smasher too. Open it up, take the platter out and go to town. Wholesome fun (",)

 

The chassis I throw in the recycle bin, since it is mostly aluminium.

[Keatah]

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+destruction

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+destroy

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+destroyer

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+shred

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+smash

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+degauss

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+drill

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+shotgun

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+melt

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+hammer

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hard+drive+crush

 

[82-T/A]

It's always good to have a reminder why it's important to physically destroy hard drives you are done with, before throwing them away.

 

It started when my friend and I were strolling through town to get some ice cream. We're both adults, but you're never too old for ice cream.

 

We passed by the local thrift store, and I always check by the back door because they put stuff they can't sell there. It's usually junk, but every now and then they put something interesting out. Today, it was an older HP computer. Not really cool, but I cracked the case and swiped a floppy drive and card reader. Call me a vulture.

 

I also noticed an 80gb IDE hard drive. I figure, could be useful to have another spare kicking around for my old builds.

 

Turns out, whoever owned this machine before I took the hard drive left every last shred of their existence on it. Thousands of personal photos, financial documents, budgets, contact lists, internet history, music, home movies, if it could go on a computer it was here.

 

I sighed and shook my head.

 

I didn't open the documents marked as budgets, contact lists, etc. Not my business.

 

I wiped the drive clean and it'll go into my box of spare computer parts.

 

But I wonder if someone other than myself would have gotten this, what they could have done with the information on it. Everything about this fellow is here, and he just gave it to the thrift shop.

 

It's a good reminder to dispose of old hard drives with extreme prejudice! Open them up, kill the platters, and be done with it. You never know who may find it.

 

 

Pretty much was going to echo Shatner's comments... it's very possible that computer was likely left over from an estate sale or something like that. That's quite often where a lot of stuff at thrift stores come from. Here in South Florida, we used to have a large old people population (not really any more, too expensive). But as they would die, the thrift stores would essentially get all their left-over stuff.

 

 

 

I've seen the same people that are paranoid a computer repair company will see their bronie pr0n dump their old computer next to an apartment complex garbage container.

 

It's called dban folks. It's free. use it. love it.

http://www.dban.org/

 

Hahah! I just found out what a bronie is a couple of months ago. My wife called me that because I was watching My Little Pony with my daughter.

 

 

 

It can be a complete waste to physically destroy hard drives, when there is no need to. This shows a complete disregard for the recycle - reuse motto. If you apply the same mindset to everything else - no wonder this material world has gone so mad in it's destruction of this earth and it's resources, etc etc. To be so self-centred and focused on the individual, and not see the greater picture, we all are part of.

We get to be recycled as human beings - seeing that reincarnation makes more sense than any other concept/idea - so why not computer tech?

 

Harvey

 

You can destroy a drive, and still recycle it. All of my excess computer equipment gets recycled. Likewise, everything else from my household gets recycled, any paper products, glass, aluminum, plastics, cardboard, that all gets recycled. Any scrap metal from my cars / welding projects, that all goes out for bulk pickup where the metal scrappers come by and pick it up. I know this, so I set it off to the side ensuring it gets recycled. Most cities in the United States have mandatory recycling programs. For many that do not, the waste / fill processing plant will pull out the metal anyway using high-powered magnets.

 

 

 

It's all about the level of integrity you need. Weaponized malware can subvert the firmware on your hard drive. If you're a bank then destroy the thing. If you're a grandma then let them copy off your cookie recipe.

 

Yup, and DCOs and HPA hidden malware too!

 

 

 

I say it's just another example of computer security paranoia (Richard Stallman would be proud). I like buying cheap used PC hardware and destroying a hard drive instead of wiping it clean seems like a needless waste. The IBM PC standard has a history just like the retro systems we know and love and today's outdated old hard drive will be a part of vintage computer heritage twenty years down the line.

 

I think we're in a different time. "Back in the day" of the 8088-386 computers... there was more to what you bought. We're not talking about destroying a Seagate ST-225. We're talking about destroying an 80gig hard drive on an old Pentium 4. For the most part, I'm all about restoring vintage computers... but most of the stuff we produce today is really just crap, and it's super-mass produced.

 

Comparing say, an 8088 Kay Pro PC-10 to an HP Pavilion would be like comparing a 1957 Chevy Bel Air to say a front wheel drive 1998 Pontiac Grand Am SE. No one is going to restore a 1998 Pontiac Grand Am SE in 20-30 years.

 

For those that do, there are FAR better options for disk storage now. I've got a Dell 325P that I use to play my old AD&D Gold Box Series games, and some of the other games from the early to mid 80s. Instead of looking for and installing an old Seagate ST3144A 130mb hard drive, I bought a 528mb Disk On Module (DOM). It's literally a small cartridge that contains a ~550mb flash card in it. It's SSD for my 386. I paid like $15 dollars for it, I get super-fast load times (the fastest the controller can support) it takes up no power, produces no noticeable heat, stores far more than I would have been able to on my magnetic drive... it's just a better all around solution than an old drive.

 

Edited August 10, 2014 by 82-T/A

[jaybird3rd]

I really like those IDE flash modules. The ones I'm familiar with are made by Transcend, and I've used several of them with vintage computers. I had a 32MB module in a little 486 machine for a while, and I'm currently using a 2GB module in a Pentium machine. They autodetect just like a mechanical hard drive, and certainly consume less power and produce less noise. They're an especially good option for filesystems that don't need to change very often, like a DOS machine that you pretty much leave alone once you've installed all the software and drivers you need. Just create a small RAM disk for your TEMP directory (if you have applications that require it), and it should last a good long time.

[Dripfree]

I recently bought a USB hard drive from a thrift store that was obviously some ones back up for images and video's also plenty of text documents that I never even looked at. I hooked it up and let my curiosity take over for about two minutes and then I got an incredibly creepy feeling building up in my gut. I knew that looking at these things was incredibly immoral to say the least so I erased it. But I'm shocked at the ignorance of someone who would just donate something like this. I think its the facebook generation everyone just puts there whole life on the net anyway so whats the difference in handing over a hard drive with your whole life on it.

[82-T/A]

I recently bought a USB hard drive from a thrift store that was obviously some ones back up for images and video's also plenty of text documents that I never even looked at. I hooked it up and let my curiosity take over for about two minutes and then I got an incredibly creepy feeling building up in my gut. I knew that looking at these things was incredibly immoral to say the least so I erased it. But I'm shocked at the ignorance of someone who would just donate something like this. I think its the facebook generation everyone just puts there whole life on the net anyway so whats the difference in handing over a hard drive with your whole life on it.

 

 

There's NOTHING immoral about looking at documents that people leave on their computer that they throw out for bulk pickup or sell to a pawn shop. It only becomes immoral if you do something with them, like put the images on the internet, or use the documents in a nefarious way (IE: personal information). I will say though, if you find something that you shouldn't... you become part of the crime.

 

When I worked at CompUSA, every now and then people would bring in computers that had stuff it shouldn't. I think they started working with police after a while.

[danny_galaga]

I bet in a lot of cases, it's not someone being careless with their information, just that their computer/drives were stolen...

[+Gemintronic]

Another good reason to wipe before you dump (your computer) is the Rumsfeld factor: "unknown unknowns"

 

Some hard drives may be refurbished and have some pervs data on it - this applies to brand name systems too! A guest or little Timmy (especially little Timmy) may surf the Internet for the wrong kind of clown mating diagrams. What you don't know can and will bite you.