Making Hard Drives Unreadable

[Marvinator]

We're entering a new partnership with a company to destroy hard drives from machines being surplussed. Some of the hard drives we remove are Non-Working and some, of course, DO still work.

As the leader of this project, I'm concerned about the amount of security involved in sending out a WORKING hard drive, even if it is headed for the shredder. What we're looking for the simplest way of making a hard drive NON readable, - also a foolproof way of doing same. I could smack each one with a hammer, but this is 'hit or miss' as to the amount of damage. We have a large degausser, but using it is time consuming and our backlog of'removed' hard drives is rather large.

Someone suggested we just break off a couple of the pins in the connector. I would like to get some confirmation as to the usability of this idea. In addition, I'm not sure if breaking them all is the way to go or just a select few.

Any info out there?

[sr71000]

breaking pins is easy enough to fix. I wouldn't suggest that option. You can:
a) open up the drives and break the platters inside
b) if they're working, use a program such as killdisk to do a low level format. This can take a while however it leaves you a working drive that is completely sanitized. Killdisk (not free) supports the same standards used by the DOD and even some stronger algorithms such as the gutmann algorithm!

[Steve R Jones]

Quote:

I could smack each one with a hammer, but this is 'hit or miss' as to the amount of damage.

Use Large hammer and more then one smack.
No need to reinvent the wheel

[sr71000]

Depending on the sensitivity of the data, they may want to make sure that all platters are damaged. I'd be nervous to just use a hammer without visually making sure all platters inside are broken. I still would opt for opening them up as the safest bet...

[nemowolf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvinator

We're entering a new partnership with a company to destroy hard drives from machines being surplussed.

As the leader of this project, I'm concerned about the amount of security involved in sending out a WORKING hard drive, even if it is headed for the shredder.

If your putting this into an industrial shredder designed to handle the load of hard drives being poured into it ... what are the chances of a drive coming out unscathed?

Since i am guessing your going to be doing a large volume, hammering one drive at a time is going to be costly in terms of manpower but great for your upper back and shoulders! Any minor damage done to the drive may be cosmetic and or repairable.

Launching each disk and running kill disk could take equally large amounts of time as someone still needs to plug and unplug all the drives. Kill disk has a free version but that is one drive at a time and their commercial version may only do one drive at a time as well.

This article summarizes the tech behind how to use a magnet and also covers that the government grinds drives to a powder ...

[sr71000]

I think he's worried about what happens in transit. And I don't think they wanna dump large amounts of time/money at the project or else they wouldn't be outsourcing another company to destroy them. I can't think of anything really feasible for you though besides taking the time to manually open them all with a screwdriver... Sorry!

[nunyadam]

Buy a Drill press, and pay somebody to put holes in them.

[Keymaker]

Well, this may not be a very productivie idea, but DARIK's Boot and Nuke will destroy all data on the drive. This is rather slow and you would need many computers to merit this idea.

Rare earth magnets! Or a powerful electric magnet would work.

You could increase profit buy wiping the good drives and selling them on eBay. Lots and lots of old hard drives sell on eBay.

[hokie64]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvinator

As the leader of this project, I'm concerned about the amount of security involved in sending out a WORKING hard drive, even if it is headed for the shredder.

Are they giving them to you, just so you can send them out somewhere else? I am a little confused.

[TOAD6147]

I think nunyadam hit the nail/hdd on the head!