I was doing a little spring cleaning and decided to get rid of a couple of old computers that were retired years ago and stuck on a shelf in my basement.
I was thinking of just reformatting the hard drives and putting them on my curb for passers-by to snag, and then I read “How should I erase my hard drive before I give it away?” by Leo Notenboom on his Ask Leo! site.
According to Leo, “But to really, positively, and permanently destroy your data you need to physically destroy the disk.”
So that’s what I set out to do.
I rounded up a couple of my kids and my dog and we stomped, chucked, smashed, covered with wood chips, and submerged the hard drives in water.
I figured if I couldn’t wipe the hard drives clean for sure, I’d better torture them before putting them out to pasture.
In case somebody stumbles on the two I just worked over, they were packaged with a dirty diaper before going in the trash, so I think I am safe.
Anyhow, just something to consider if you are tossing out or donating a computer. Be sure to reformat the hard drive at a minimum.
{ 6 comments }
Hi Dan -
Yeah, I think somebody would be hard pressed to even find these two HDs in the trash, inside a dirty diaper.
If they find it and are willing to try and recover random data, they can have it.
I’m pretty sure that the data isn’t entirely lost. The interior of the HD is sealed and a vacuum assures that.
I’m about 90% sure that your data can be still recovered
Hey Vlad -
The whole diaper and HD package will probably outlast me by hundreds of years.
My proud legacy.
Shawn,
Are the hard drives biodegradable? Com on! What about the environment? Unless of course the diapers were meant to speed up the process…. lol
They were reformatted, too. They are pretty banged up and nasty now.
Somebody would be crazy to try and do anything to recover them now.
LOL did you really want to destroy them? I have seen hard drives survive more than that. Probably a hammer would have done a better job, good luck!
Comments on this entry are closed.