PC disposal/destruction?

wayne77

So...how do I find/distinguish the hard drive? And what about the memory?

[Deleted User]

basmic wrote: »

Use a program which will use a multi-pass erasure method - ideally 7 passes, but for maximum (and probably over the top) security, use 35.

That's way, way over the top. If someone that desperate to get at your personal information, then it'd be easier for them to just break into your house. I'm sure Marty J said something very similar recently.

gjchester

wayne77 wrote: »

So...how do I find/distinguish the hard drive? And what about the memory?

Silver box usually 3.5 inches by about 5 inches, by maybe 1/2 an inch.

See http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=hard%20disk&m=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi for an idea but they won't have the covers and the platter visible (the round bits)

The long term memory is the hard drive, the memory in a PC is just short term, and memory "forgets" everything when the power is turned off, there no need to wipe it.

gjchester

macman wrote: »

Take out the hard drive and destroy it with a hammer.

Why It achieves nothing other than destruction?

Running DBAN will effectivly wipe it completely and someone gets a working PC. Smashing it up jsut for the sake of it is pointless.

mluton

We drill 2 holes through our customers old hard drives.

macman

But it's better than smashing up the entire base unit, which is what the OP was originally proposing.
I recall there was a chap on here a couple of months back who had a virus-so he took a sledgehammer to the entire PC. Now that's what I call overkill!

Percy1983

As mentioned dban is the way forward, why smash perfectly good hardware?

gjchester

macman wrote: »

But it's better than smashing up the entire base unit, which is what the OP was originally proposing.
I recall there was a chap on here a couple of months back who had a virus-so he took a sledgehammer to the entire PC. Now that's what I call overkill!

I understand that but DBAN will erase the hard drive so effectivly no-one but goverments will have the hardware to recover data. In one way DBAN'ing it and installing the OS and giving it away decrease the chance your data is recovered the data as the next user's info will be on it on top of the data you had.

You do not need to smash the hard drive to ensure the data is not recoverable by 99.9999% of the world. Theoretically you can recover the data by deep reading the magnetic flux patterns, but you can do that if you drilled or smashed the drive. (But that is highly theoretical and not practical to do by Mr ID thief..)

All you are trying to do is make it too hard for the casual ID thief to get to, if you wipe it to military standards that will do it, and thats what DBAN can do.

isofa

mluton wrote: »

We drill 2 holes through our customers old hard drives.

Hope it's not government, child or other very sensitive data, a good forensic data recovery rig could recover most data from a simple drive destruction such as that...

isofa

macman wrote: »

I recall there was a chap on here a couple of months back who had a virus-so he took a sledgehammer to the entire PC. Now that's what I call overkill!

That's what I call an idiot...