Disposing of old desktop

forgotmyname

bsod wrote: »

citation?

which recycling centre does he work at

if it's not going to be reused, hammer + glass substrate, http://maisonbisson.com/files/2010/11/hard-drive-broken-cracked-1024x1024.jpg one second, no torx screwdrivers or drill bits to find.

dban or full format can takes hours or days

Not all platters are glass, most desktop hard drives use metal platters. Even some laptop drives use metal platters. Some are brittle and will break when hit. Some will bend.

But the show i remember said they can even take a flake of the foil from a CD and retrieve the data. The pieces in the picture you put will be HUGE to them and make it a very easy job to retrieve the data.

http://www.howtogeek.com/174307/how-can-i-safely-destroy-sensitive-data-cdsdvds/

and

http://www.datarecoveryspecialists.co.uk/blog/can-data-be-recovered-from-shredded-hard-drives

Ignore the bit about 20 years though, unless you have one man and a cheap argos microscope.

You dont need to DBAN, just fill the drive with new data. Can still take a while on large drives though.

jackieblack

bouicca21 wrote: »

Now that's very mse. Does it work?

Yes, it does
I've done the same with old laptop HDDs

googler

bouicca21 wrote: »

Now that's very mse. Does it work?

Yes! . . . . . . . .

googler

boliston wrote: »

I would just hang onto a drive as they take up very little space and can be handy if a drive dies and you need one to tide you over. Often desktops have room for several drives so you could just stick it in your new pc.

This. It's so easy to just keep the old drive

rmg1

forgotmyname wrote: »

I take the dead ones apart because the parts are so useful. Those little motors spin very quickly, platters are ideal for making washers and spacers etc.

The aluminium shells get melted down and i make castings from them.

If your really bored you can extract the gold from the board, but it will probably cost you £25 to get 50p worth of gold.

Not one of them has ever been wiped, or had destructive means just to erase data. You dont need to kill the drive to do that, you can download tools that will do it. And more securely than hitting it with a hammer or shredding it.

One of the tech shows had a specialist who said he can recover data from a piece of platter thats 0.25mm in size.
If you hape erased and overwritten the entire drive then there will ne nothing to recover. Just damaging it wont destroy all that data.

And you can have a great deal of fun with the magnets!! :rotfl:

bsod

forgotmyname wrote: »

But the show i remember said they can even take a flake of the foil from a CD and retrieve the data. The pieces in the picture you put will be HUGE to them and make it a very easy job to retrieve the data.

Was it Comic-con

NiftyDigits

bouicca21 wrote: »

Now that's very mse. Does it work?

No. For your drive you would need this; http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CIT-USB-2-0-External-HDD-Enclosure-For-3-5-SATA-and-IDE-Hard-Drives-U35SPA-/201384915455?

It's not worth it.