Is my hard drives damaged enough? (1 Viewer)

[Michael Ballack]

Hey everyone, I need your advice. It was time to get rid of my older computers and I wanted to make sure no one would get my info on the hard drive. I've heard one of the best ways is to take a hammer to a hard drive and bash the shit out of it. So I did just that. The following is a photo of what's left of it. I'm not a professional photographer, but I hope you experts can tell me if I did a good enough job to not have to worry about anyone getting anything off of it. Thank you.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

and hopefully not a professional computer technician either!

CJ

 

[Mary M S]

At the moment, I would like to apply the same treatment to my case/power supply/CPU/Mobo/router etc.

Next time, can I help?

needing to vent my computer related frustrations somewhere. That looks like FUN!

 

[Michael Ballack]

It was fun. I got a lot of anger out of me just bashing the hell out of it. Great stress reliever. I felt like Christopher and Tony B in the episode on the Sopronos when they were bashing skulls with sledge hammers.

 

[David_Moechnig]

I shot one with 00 buck shot from a 12 gauge shtgun once. Only I did it for fun, not to keep people from reading old data.

 

[Al.Anderson]

It certainly looks like you had a good time!

Next time, if you aren't in quite the same mood, I suggest you perform a DoD 7 pass wipe and then for good measure drill a couple of holes through the platters. Even if you like the hammer approach I would do the wipe first.

 

[Michael Ballack]

Thanks Al. One of the hard drives I couldn't even get the computer it was on to boot all the way without freezing up, and the other I did use some software to wipe. I wish I was more of a handy man, but I don't really have a drill to put holes through them. I think I did a pretty good job damaging them, although I'm sure some expert out there could probablly some how recover something. I just did a good enough job that I feel someone would have to be truly an expert and desperate to get what's left of it.

 

[John Watson]

Next step is an acid bath.

Then proceed to burning them, in an actual fire.

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

I've seen that on TechTV before they got killed by G4. I believe they used thermite powder. It was pretty cool watching it burn at 900+ degrees. I doubt anyone can recover data from a drive that was partially melted.