PC hardware: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data?
- 11/14/08 3:00 PM
Cleaning hard drives an worthy causes
by patcheye.com - 11/1/08 1:29 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Formatting a disk is usually sufficient.
If the hard drive is in the computer then formatting it usually is easy, especially if you are donating it to an elementary school or kid's center (MY choice for a worthy cause).
If the drives are not in the computer you can get a USB enclosure for it (cost $15 to $20). Then format it. If you are extremely paranoid about your personal data, use a Linux disk to format it.
If you can afford it, why not donate the HDDs with enclosures. My experience is that kid's centers have lots of users for each computer, and giving the kids some way to save their work without compromising THEIR privacy would be a very, very good thing.
As you may have guessed I used to volunteer at a local elementary school that could not even afford chalk! The teachers had to buy their own.
I finally got a data center set up in an abandoned room (I think it used to be an unofficial "break room" for the janitors) with scrounged and donated equipment. Kids had to sign up for 30 minutes of time almost two weeks in advance.
If your local school is affluent and already has a computer lab, I bet there is another one as broke as the one I used to volunteer at.
I am now in a wheelchair (on my good days) so most of my volunteering days are over. Please help the kids, they are probably the most worthy cause out there. Pardon the rant, but i care deeply and get carried away.
I Would
by SYNTHESISER - 11/1/08 1:37 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Delete Data And Then Record Blank Over It Like A Unconnected Wire To Record Snow.
Most Used By IT Departments And Most Reliable
by GD77 - 11/1/08 1:45 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Getting rid of old drives...
by Wolfie2k5 - 11/1/08 2:23 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Kathy,
Well... There's a LOT of different ways to do it. Some are more effective than others. Some are more permanent than others. It all depends on how far you're willing to go.
As you've no doubt heard, formatting a hard drive, removing the partition is pretty much useless these days. Formatting can be a "quick" or "thorough" format. A Quick format simply overwrites the part of the drive where the drive's index is stored - that's the part that tells the operating system where your files are physically located. A through format actually overwrites the entire drive - both the master file table (MFT - the previously mentioned index) and the data areas. A partition is a virtual container that defines how the data is stored on the drive. A partition is usually referred to in Windows by a drive letter.
The problem with the Quick format is that it only overwrites the MFT - leaving all the data intact. It's actually possible to undo a quick format and recover data fairly easily these days. A Thorough format is a bit better, but data recovery forensics these days can be likewise used to recover data.
So what can you do? There are a few options. There are programs (some freebies) that can format a hard drive in such a way that it makes it very difficult to recover data that's been wiped out. Many of these conform to Department of Defense (DOD) standards. The current standard for a DOD wipe is 5220.22-M. These programs accomplish a wipe by overwriting all of the tracks with random bits (ones and zeros) multiple times.
The only hitch with this - data recovery forensics have just about caught up with even a DOD level wipe. Of course, this sort of recovery isn't exactly common, nor is it cheap. Of course, that will change - like all things tech tend to do - it will get and more accessible.
Your best bet would be to do the DOD level wipe multiple times. Because the DOD wipe overwrites data multiple times, and if you repeat the process more than once, that means the data areas have been overwritten quite a few times. There's a limit as to how many changes (writes) the data patterns that were written on the hard drive can last under that sort of treatment and be recovered to their original content. It's doubtful that much, if anything would survive that kind of treatment. Perhaps in 10 - 20 years, someone might come up with a way to recover data that's been infintely overwritten.
The downsides to a DOD wipe - you have to install the drive on another channel AND it takes time. You wouldn't want to wipe the boot drive. It can take a fairly long time to completely process a drive multiple times - depending on how big the drive happens to be.
You can use Google to find these tools by searching for "DOD hard drive wipe".
Another alternative would be to use a heavy degaussing magnet, the kind used to bulk erase video tape (and other magnetic media). This can work, but it may or may not be quite as thorough as a DOD wipe. Under NO circumstances should your hard drive be plugged into a computer or any other power source while you're doing this if you go this route. Having a hard drive plugged into a power source while you're attempting to degauss it could damage the drive and anything else the tool might get close to.
If you wanted to put a drive permananetly out of it's misery, with next to no possibility of data recovery - the solution would be to destroy the drive. This can be done in numerous ways - drilling through the platter(s), a steam roller, a 50 ton press, dropping it off a cliff... You can get quite creative with that.
Getting rid of old drives
by linitwdwrd - 11/14/08 10:43 PM In reply to: Getting rid of old drives... by Wolfie2k5Thank You Wolfie2K5 You're Professional feedback is much appreciated
The 50 ton press sounds perfect. I was wondering about formatting a hard drive if it would wipe it out or not.
Thanks again
Great answer...small correction
by kkraz - 11/15/08 7:05 AM In reply to: Getting rid of old drives... by Wolfie2k5Wolfie2k5 has provided a good answer that really makes clear what the technology can and can't do. As for permanently destroying a drive, turns out it depends on your drive and the height of the cliff 
Popular Mechanics just did a little test on four portable external drives and found that one survived unscathed from a 15 foot drop.
donating hard drives
by ferree01 - 11/1/08 2:56 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
the best method i know is to buy a commercial product that offers disk deletions that include a department of defence specification.
Depens On Your Paranoia
by wexmary - 11/1/08 2:57 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have a 6-year old drive I am donating. I am extremely paranoid so I ran two DOD CDs on it and wiped it thoroughly. Short of taking a sledgehammer, that is the best way to get any data off of it.
Response to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all m
by AstraPoint - 11/1/08 3:37 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you own a Mac (or know someone who would let you use theirs) it's easy to wipe your hard drives clean.
Apple provides a free Disk Utility program that comes with Mac OS X. Open this program, select the correct hard drive, select the Erase tab, and erase the disk. If your disk came from a PC (and not a Mac) you will have to format the disk first, but the Mac OS will help guide you through this process.
-AstraPoint
Take the Drive Outside and Toss It Around
by Daddio1949 - 11/1/08 3:40 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
This method destroys the drive much like using a hammer, except you don't need a hammer. Take the drive outside and toss it up in the air, the higher the better, a few times and it land on a sidewalk or street.
Take the Drive Outside and Toss It Around
by Riaan Pieters - 11/15/08 7:11 AM In reply to: Take the Drive Outside and Toss It Around by Daddio1949Can you read Daddio? This ain't a circuss contest!
Clean old hard drives
by aljatrad - 11/1/08 4:19 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Download and use 'Killdisk Trial version' which is free for personal use and make a boot disk and then run Kill Disk to erase all data. You will need to reset your bios to boot from a CD drive to run Killdisk. The hard drive will be overwritten by "0's", do this about 3 to 5 times and all data will be effectively destroyed. Some data may remain but it will be worthless to anybody and the hard drive can then be reused wherever you want. I generally run killdisk only once and that is for all practical purposes enough to destroy the data.
You need to set the disk you want to destroy data on, as 'slave', and be careful that you destroy the right disk data else you will wipe your own C drive.
Cheers
Erase Harddrive For Donation
by tomscn - 11/1/08 4:27 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
http://www.heidi.ie/node/6
This is the best for completely erasing harddrive
Donating hard drive
by mrpaul - 11/1/08 4:54 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There is a program called Window Washer which can overwrite a hard drive making data non retrievable. It is an inexpensive program and works great. Just set to wash and it does the rest
Disk Redactor - wipe it clean 1,2,many times
by andyc88 - 11/1/08 4:59 AM In reply to: Donating hard drives, how do I get rid of all my personal data? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Using Mircosoft Windows:
- Take each disk and mount it as a spare disk
(use a USB 2 drive box, readily available if required)
1)Reformat the disk - full mode
(not quick mode, which only resets the pointers not over-writes any data )
For a more robust/paranoid approach.
2)Reformat, and then use a wipe clean utility
eg Cezeo's (free) Disk Redactor, which overwites all unused parts of the disk.
A useful utility even for using after using windows "delete" functions anyway.
You can choose to wipe it clean 1, 2 or 3 times depending on if you really think that someone would deliberately try to recover data using expensive (and desperate!) electronic techniques.
1 time will be more than adequate for normal data.
Ultimately, if you are in any doubt have it crushed, as Government and defense departments do (- or should do anyway !).
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