How do you permanently erase a hard drive without physically destroying it?

[PM Martin]

[Dennis Donovan]

1. big magnet

will scramble the contents

[Galraedia]

40. A magnet will damage the drive.

[tabatha]

2. Write zeros all over it.

[The Straight Story]

3. degausser/magnet - used them at the bank a lot, work well :) (nt)

[Cali_Democrat]

4. format it

[SomethingFishy]

33. Formatting your drive does not erase everything...

Common misconception. Plenty of recoverable data on a formatted drive.

[Tesha]

37. Nope. That's not nearly enough. (NT)

[JoePhilly]

5. Hold it up to the giant magnet in Rick Perry's head.

Everything on your hard drive will be sucked right off of it. Especially the stupid stuff.

And then almost immediately, Rick Perry won't remember any of it.

[DFab420]

6. The question is what type of harddrive? if it's a flash drive just overwrite all the content with

random images or files you care nothing about.

If it's a disc though you are going to have a tougher time. You may want to look into hardrive wiping software, but even then some data may still be around.

Magnets don't work anymore really that's just a hollywood thing.

so my suggestion is this..

1. Clean it using erasing software
2. Reformat fully, maybe even do it twice.

But if you are really concerned about security, a drill press and a new harddrive are really the only way to go.

[Tesha]

41. Flash drives are almost impossible to erase thoroughly.

While you can empty the drive and entirely re-fill
it several times, there's no guarantee you're actually
getting new data into all of the Physical Erase Blocks
(PEBs) on the Flash drive.

In particular, any PEB that has been marked bad will
never be accessed again so all the pron that was stored
in those blocks will remain forever, inaccessible to
you but likely very accessible to forensic criminolo-
gists with specialized tools.

For flash drives, I'd recommend physical destruction.
Another alternative is to take off any metal enclosure
and then microwave the circuit board thoroughly. (For
the safety of your microwave oven, place a cup of
water in the microwave chamber along with the flash
chips.)

Tesha

[enough]

7. If you do the magnet thing, can you still use the computer afterward? (nt)

[DFab420]

9. Well the magnet would probably do more damage to other bits of the comp. and not the HD.

so it's hard to say

[Tesha]

38. There's nothing in a modern, non-CRT computer that's likely to be damaged by any permanent magnet...

...that you can bring to bear. Even the hard drive data
is likely to survive.

An AC electromagnet, on the other hand, will likely
do damage if powered-up.

Tesha

[Fumesucker]

10. Do a low level format on it..

http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

[The Straight Story]

20. You remove the HD first (nt)

[enough]

30. Oh right. Should have been obvious. Thanks. (nt)

[sdfernando]

31. No!!!! Don't use a magnet if you want to reuse the drive

A big magnet or degausser will not only scramble & erase the data on the disk platters inside the case, but it will also erase the SERVO track laid down my the manufacturer. That is the track that tells the read/write heads where they are on the platter. Erasing the SERVO track will make the drive completely useless. You'll never be able to use for anything more than a paper weight, or piece of sculpture.

[Fumesucker]

8. Run Vista on it?

:evilgrin:

:hide:

Seriously, there are freeware programs that will do this, someone will tell us in a few minutes..

[Morning Dew]

15. FTW

and I actually don't mind Vista.

Good chuckle.

[Fumesucker]

19. I just wasn't sure about the "without physically damaging part"..

;)

[The Straight Story]

22. I am running vista right now and have not had any pr

[Jackpine Radical]

17. Only if you don't have a legacy copy of DOS 4.0.

[cliffordu]

27. Well......

:rofl:

[hunter]

11. Dariks Boot and Nuke...

http://www.dban.org

There's more programs like this but it's the one I thought of first.

[krkaufman]

25. ditto.

Easy to use.

Just be careful. It's best to make sure you have ONLY the drive you want erased connected.

[MilesColtrane]

26. +1

The program is designed to securely erase a hard disk until data is permanently removed and no longer recoverable, which is achieved by overwriting the data with random numbers generated by Mersenne twister or ISAAC (a PRNG).

The Gutmann method, Quick Erase, DoD Short (3 passes), and DOD 5220.22-M (7 passes) are also included as options to handle Data remanence.

[SteveG]

46. Yup, that's what we use at work

It's one drawback is that it's slow.

[SomethingFishy]

34. +1 n/t

[DFab420]

12. Magnets really don't work that well on externals.

[Sub Atomic]

13. You need to take it apart, then flip that silver disc over.

You've filled up the 'A' side of it.


:hi:

[Bosonic]

14. usually the hard drive manufacturers website

will have some variant of a low level wipe program; this will take a long time for TB size disks.

Most of the time formatting partitions should be good enough.

[Umbral]

16. A free program, CCleaner, has a utility that will zero out a harddrive...

I can't imagine a scenario where you would need a better solution - well I can, but it's only 'cause I like SciFi and spy novels.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

18. loads of ways...

here's something pretty basic on the process and a link to software to do what you need...

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/how-to-really-erase-a-hard-drive/129

sP

[Ruby the Liberal]

21. Reformat it

[RC]

35. Formatting does not ease the information on the HD

Just the information of where the data is. The data can still be recovered for $500 to $1000 or so.
dban and such is the best solution.

[Rex]

23. Low level format.

Maxtor makes a great program for that.

[slackmaster]

24. I like using high-order explosives

That doesn't technically DESTROY the drive, just rearranges it.

[belcffub]

28. 12 gauge... rinse and repeat...

always repeat...

[NNN0LHI]

29. Cheap as an HD is now I would just open up the old one and use a blowtorch on it and get a new one

[liberaltrucker]

32. TrueCrypt has a wipe function

It can overwrite an HD as many times as you like.
7 is the DOD spec. Keep in mind that it'll take a
LOOOONG time.

[FarLeftFist]

36. Hilarious title.

[Dawson Leery]

39. Physically destroying it is the best way.

[Galraedia]

42. HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED...

Darik's Boot And Nuke
http://www.dban.org/

[Tesha]

43. On a Macintosh, use the "Disk Utility".

1. Launch Disk Utility and point it at the drive
you want to wipe.

2. Click on the "Erase" tab.

3. Click on the "Security options" and make your
choice.

4. Let 'er rip.

[sendero]

44. You...

... write over every sector at least 7 times.

[rdking647]

45. over write it with 0's

then do it again with 1's
then a third time with 0's

[HopeHoops]

47. You have to run a DOD format about ten times.

Shit lingers that can be picked up with sensitive reading devices. The DOD format writes all 1s and then all 0s ten or so times to every track. That pretty well wipes it, but I've read that they can still pick up trace data and Murphy's Law dictates that whatever they find is exactly what you didn't want them to find.

The only way to totally wipe a drive without disassembling it is to drill holes through it. It seems drastic, but it won't spin after that.