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marmelising old hard drives

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Arborbridge
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marmelising old hard drives

#282097

Postby Arborbridge » February 4th, 2020, 8:33 am

I have a fine collection of old laptops which I need to get rid of.

Is there a downloadable app (preferably free, naturally) which will delete everything on the hard drive, or some way of reformatting so that nothing is easily recoverable?

Thanks,


Arb.

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282098

Postby scrumpyjack » February 4th, 2020, 8:36 am

Electric drill through the hard drive is much quicker and more effective!

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282104

Postby bungeejumper » February 4th, 2020, 8:48 am

Put it in a vice and chop out a lump with an angle grinder. Takes 60 seconds, and the firework display is pretty.

BJ

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282112

Postby staffordian » February 4th, 2020, 9:12 am

The suggestions sound extremely satisfying, but don't seem very useful if someone wants to do the environmentally friendly thing and give away or sell the laptops...

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282123

Postby Urbandreamer » February 4th, 2020, 9:37 am

If the point is to destroy the data past possible retreval, then the hammer or drill is the way to go.

If you have no privacy concerns then you can simply del files (which will in fact leave the contents on the hard disk).
OR you could fully format the hard disk, which will leave traces in the form of weak domains in the magnetic media.
OR you could repeatedly write random values across the disk, which should further weaken the domains.

When GCHQ advised on sanitized the computers that had Snowden's data, the disks were chopped up then exposed to magnetic fields produced by a machine called a degausser.

I personally would use a drill or hammer, but you can boot from a live linux distro and wipe the disk with a single command.
You have a choice of dd (an old copy utility often called destroy disk as it's all too easy to acidentally overwrite your disk).
Shred attempts to destroy files, wipe or scrub attempt the same. Under linux you can consider the disk AS a single file to be written/wiped/scrubbed.

Hirens boot CD also contains a utility to overwrite hard disks.

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282124

Postby Infrasonic » February 4th, 2020, 9:43 am


Arborbridge
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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282129

Postby Arborbridge » February 4th, 2020, 10:09 am

Urbandreamer wrote:If the point is to destroy the data past possible retreval, then the hammer or drill is the way to go.

If you have no privacy concerns then you can simply del files (which will in fact leave the contents on the hard disk).
OR you could fully format the hard disk, which will leave traces in the form of weak domains in the magnetic media.
OR you could repeatedly write random values across the disk, which should further weaken the domains.

When GCHQ advised on sanitized the computers that had Snowden's data, the disks were chopped up then exposed to magnetic fields produced by a machine called a degausser.

I personally would use a drill or hammer, but you can boot from a live linux distro and wipe the disk with a single command.
You have a choice of dd (an old copy utility often called destroy disk as it's all too easy to acidentally overwrite your disk).
Shred attempts to destroy files, wipe or scrub attempt the same. Under linux you can consider the disk AS a single file to be written/wiped/scrubbed.

Hirens boot CD also contains a utility to overwrite hard disks.


Can you point me to how I can reformat the hard drive? I've never done that and don't see anything obvious.


Arb.

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282136

Postby jfgw » February 4th, 2020, 10:32 am

How sensitive are the data and how much effort would you expect a potential data thief to exert?

Software which overwrites the data should be sufficient for most people. On a modern hard drive, overwritten data are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recover. However, if the drive has reallocated data on bad sectors, those bad sectors will not be overwritten and will still contain data. These bad sectors are managed transparently by the drive itself and are not normally visible but they can be read with the right tool.

Hard drives have, for several years now, had an internal command to sanitise the disc. This overwrites all sectors including the bad ones. You could Google "disc sanitiser" but you may find that your bios blocks the command. Also, I understand that not all drives implement this command correctly.

Hard drives are aluminium. If you use an angle-grinder, do not use the same cutting disk that you use for steel or you may set off a thermite reaction (big flash, singed hair).

Julian F. G. W.

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282137

Postby Howard » February 4th, 2020, 10:38 am

This post is very timely for me as I have an eleven-year old hard drive which I took apart yesterday evening. It is a marvellous piece of engineering but was painfully slow compared with an SSD which I fitted into my desktop.

Is there any point in recycling old drives? Who would use them, now that SSD drives are so cheap? (Apart from a hacker who might be interested in the previous owner's financial information). Is it economical and environmentally friendly to incur the costs of transporting glacially slow equipment to another user?

regards

Howard

(Sadly this question could also be applied to old printers. After many years use, mine became unreliable. It still looked like new and I took it to the recycling centre but expect that it was just chucked in a skip in the end?)

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282140

Postby Arborbridge » February 4th, 2020, 10:44 am

jfgw wrote:How sensitive are the data and how much effort would you expect a potential data thief to exert?

Software which overwrites the data should be sufficient for most people. On a modern hard drive, overwritten data are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recover. However, if the drive has reallocated data on bad sectors, those bad sectors will not be overwritten and will still contain data. These bad sectors are managed transparently by the drive itself and are not normally visible but they can be read with the right tool.

Hard drives have, for several years now, had an internal command to sanitise the disc. This overwrites all sectors including the bad ones. You could Google "disc sanitiser" but you may find that your bios blocks the command. Also, I understand that not all drives implement this command correctly.

Hard drives are aluminium. If you use an angle-grinder, do not use the same cutting disk that you use for steel or you may set off a thermite reaction (big flash, singed hair).

Julian F. G. W.



These laptops probably do not contain critical data, but there is a chance that there is data from years back when my wife was a teacher, therefore there might be childrens names, reports? - I'm not sure.
Anyway, possibly re-formatting or "overwriting" would be sufficient - if someone could explain how to do this.

On my own PCs I remove the drive and drill holes in them.

Arb.

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282143

Postby Arborbridge » February 4th, 2020, 10:46 am

Howard wrote:This post is very timely for me as I have an eleven-year old hard drive which I took apart yesterday evening. It is a marvellous piece of engineering but was painfully slow compared with an SSD which I fitted into my desktop.

Is there any point in recycling old drives? Who would use them, now that SSD drives are so cheap? (Apart from a hacker who might be interested in the previous owner's financial information). Is it economical and environmentally friendly to incur the costs of transporting glacially slow equipment to another user?

regards

Howard

(Sadly this question could also be applied to old printers. After many years use, mine became unreliable. It still looked like new and I took it to the recycling centre but expect that it was just chucked in a skip in the end?)


I get a shock and some guilty feelings when I go down our local "tip". What are we doing to the world? All these "small appliances" which last a blink of an eye piled up high and now useless. Even if something last fifteen years, that's not long really.

Arb.

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282145

Postby Urbandreamer » February 4th, 2020, 10:54 am

Arborbridge wrote:Can you point me to how I can reformat the hard drive? I've never done that and don't see anything obvious.

Arb.


Well first you need to boot from something else other than the HD you are to format. I've not checked, but wouldn't be surprised if Windows didn't even give you the option to format the OS hard drive or partition. Most OS's installed upon a HD make use of that HD to run so can't reformat it while running.

You could download a copy of Hirens boot CD and boot from that.
https://www.hirensbootcd.org/

That will boot an operating system running in memory.
I've not used this one, but it claims to have
HDD Low Level Format Tool v4.40
Which could be used to format the hard drive.

Alternativewly you could download a version of linux, burn a CD and use that.
ie
https://tails.boum.org/doc/encryption_a ... ex.en.html

Or, you could create a bootable USB, ie
https://unetbootin.github.io/

If you are running a modern PC and operating system you will need to enable the computer to boot from a different device.
You may need to visit Settings->Recovery->Advanced_Startup in Windows 10 to properly reboot. Windows 10 introduced this as a security feature to prevent anyone with physical access booting from another device and bipassing the login to harvest data.

Possibly you will need to enable USB boot in the BIOS. When booting you need to indicate that you don't wish to use the default device (usually F12) and select the CD/USB.

Google should help with whichever tool you pick.

Finally, if you are happy that you don't need to protect against dedicated efforts to recover data, then you could create a Win 10 install USB and simply overwrite the hard disk with a new version of windows. When it asks you to create a microsoft account, you can reject the option and when it asks for a key simply select that you have non.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-crea ... fi-support

Or do the same with a Linux distribution.

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282188

Postby JohnB » February 4th, 2020, 1:35 pm

Its sad that 15 years only gets you from 150 to 500GB. 35 years ago the first hard disk I encountered held 10MB.

It depends whether the OP thinks the laptops any use to anyone. If they are, taking out the hard disk will probably remove most of that value, so you either leave them intact and do a reformat with a few extra wipe passes as others have described before giving to charity, or smash the thing a few times with a sledgehammer and put it in the council skip.

The chances of it being resurrected once in the waste stream are utterly minimal unless you are being tailed by Men in Black, in which case, Hi there Geoff.

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282196

Postby jfgw » February 4th, 2020, 2:02 pm

Reformatting does not itself overwrite data, you need to run a program which does. DBAN is an old favourite which can boot from a CD but I don't think it works on SSDs.

Julian F. G. W.

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282211

Postby didds » February 4th, 2020, 2:55 pm

wrt recycling/re-using old hard drives...

Ive a couple of dozen old HDs circa 40-80 Gb that Ive had for sale on FB marketplace for a year now for about £5-£10 each (cleaned using a disk kill utility such as DBAN). No takers. Nobody is interested in my (albeit maybe limited) experience. Probably for understasndable reasons given their small size in effect.

didds

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282225

Postby stevensfo » February 4th, 2020, 3:39 pm

I think I started using Eraser/over-writing programs about 25 years ago when I discovered that deleting a file doesn't really do much. There are probably loads of them about, but the encryption program 'Axcrypt' also has this function. It's open-source software and free. You just right-click on files and select 'Secure erase' or something like that.
I actually prefer the older version of Axcrypt that I still have on a Windows 7 PC, but the latest version adds a second layer of security to check it's you doing the deleting etc.

Steve

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282235

Postby BobbyD » February 4th, 2020, 4:08 pm

Arborbridge wrote:I have a fine collection of old laptops which I need to get rid of.

Is there a downloadable app (preferably free, naturally) which will delete everything on the hard drive, or some way of reformatting so that nothing is easily recoverable?

Thanks,


Arb.


Download Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) - https://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/f ... o/download

Create bootable CD.

Mark CD very clearly.

Use CD to boot laptop.

Use DBAN to perform multiple overwrites on your HD.

Put CD in a safe place.

There's a more detailed guide here: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-erase-a ... an-2619148

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282254

Postby jackdaww » February 4th, 2020, 6:00 pm

sadly these old laptops are unwanted, they have no use .

i took a hammer to the hard drive , to no effect.

these HDD's are not fragile.

it took a 7lb sledge to do for it .

:o

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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282268

Postby JohnB » February 4th, 2020, 7:17 pm


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Re: marmelising old hard drives

#282282

Postby Breelander » February 4th, 2020, 8:28 pm

JohnB wrote:Pratchett used a steamroller...


Yes, but it wasn't as effective as you'd imagine...

The disk proved sturdier than initially imagined and was driven over multiple times by the vehicle, before being put through a steam-powered stone crusher for good measure.
https://discworld.com/terry-pratchetts- ... ng-wishes/

The best tool to destroy a hard drive is a small cross-head screwdriver. That's all it takes to remove the cover, and doing so introduces sufficient dust to destroy any chance of being able to read from the platters ever again. If you want to help the process, add some sand, grit, oil, superglue - whatever you feel like.


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