Discarding hard drives

[Don]

I have some old, slow, low-capacity hard drives that I want to get rid of. Should I shred the data and then delete the partitions, or is that really overkill because deleting the partitions is enough by itself?

Thanks.

[Snowhog]

If you intend to discard them, physical damage is sufficient (who really wants what you had on them anyway, right?). Drill holes through the drive if you have an electric drill. Take a hole punch and a hammer if not.

[claydoh]

If you intend to sell/donate/recycle them, then a full wipe/overwrite is the safer way to go versus just deleting the partition. This just clears the partition table info, and doers not actually remove any data. Recovery software can retrieve this fairly easily.

[Qqmike]

Deleting partitions does nothing (except to move some data pointers around, or negate them/turn them off).
As these guys said, two options:

1 Physically damage the disks by removing the drive; then maybe a sledge hammer/punch, drill, etc. Caution: Use eye goggle protection! (The platters will come out and off at some point of this process.) Just mess up the platters real good. No one would make any effort to retrieve data from them.

2 Wipe the drives -- write zeros to every 'bit' of the drive. Or random numbers. Or your favorite numbers. Or multiple passes.
See my how-to for using the dd function (for more options than you care to read about):
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...The-dd-Command

[GreyGeek]

Another way is to expose the platters and then heat them with a Bunsen or propane torch till they are cherry red, which puts their temperature over the Curie point for Iron, which is 770C. That will usually fry the circuit board as well. Or, if you have a wood burning stove that will work. So will a campfire.

[Bings]

Explosives will probably also work.

[Fred47]

If you are going to break the discs, I suggest taking the magnet out. It's very powerful and might come in handy some day.

[dequire]

Or just give them to Hillary...

[jlittle]

I keep lots of old drives for backups. Especially 2.5″ ones from dead laptops. USB 3 gives enough power to drive laptop drives, so a SATA to USB adapter makes it convenient. I tend to think that one can't have too many backups, though using old hardware for backups seems questionable.

[Fred47]

I keep lots of old drives for backups. Especially 2.5″ ones from dead laptops. USB 3 gives enough power to drive laptop drives, so a SATA to USB adapter makes it convenient. I tend to think that one can't have too many backups, though using old hardware for backups seems questionable.

I did that for awhile, then USB drives got cheaper than the kits to convert drives to USB. And like you said using old hardware is questionable in this case.

[GreyGeek]

Or just give them to Hillary...

Doing that, they may end up on some NYC computer repairman's laptop!

[GreyGeek]

I keep lots of old drives for backups. Especially 2.5″ ones from dead laptops. USB 3 gives enough power to drive laptop drives, so a SATA to USB adapter makes it convenient. I tend to think that one can't have too many backups, though using old hardware for backups seems questionable.

I have two 695Gb spinners setting in USB caddies that plug into my USB 3.0 port. They are my "portable" away storage.

[TwoFistedJustice]

If you have time/inclination or a curious kid who likes to take things apart you can disassemble them and harvest the magnets for, well, magnets, and the platters are VERY shiny and make nice, umm, shiny things.

[Snowhog]

VERY strong magnets. Don't get your finger caught between two of them!

[Clayman1000x]

Or just give them to Hillary...

Love that comment