<p>Is taking an axe to it and smashing it to smithereens good enough ;)</p>
<p>or do I really need to go buy the software to erase and overwrite?</p>
<p>Smashing the hard drive with a sledge hammer s/b adequate. Put it in an open topped box first to help contain the flying parts.</p>
<p>And - I’m sure you can download software that would do the erase/rewrite of the sectors for free but then you have to trust that it does it correctly.</p>
<p>But it’s not that easy to break. I’m sure if I accidentally dropped it, I would have to pay 100s to have it fixed, but now that I am trying to destroy it with a sledgehammer, I am sweating it out and just chipping away little pieces.
Any specific parts to look for, as far as making sure they are destroyed?</p>
<p>First, take out the hard drive.</p>
<p>Second, smash the circuit board that’s on it making sure to include smashing the read/write arms/heads.</p>
<p>Third, smash the disk platters enough so they’re at least dented and gouged a bit. It shouldn’t take much force - just dropping the sledge on it is usually adequate. Keep in mind that unless the platters are fairly perfectly flat and aligned and spinning very fast with a r/w head that’s also perfectly aligned one can’t read the data from the drive. If it contains the codes for a nuclear launch I’d probably advise a bit more.</p>
<p>After doing the above it’d be virtually impossible to get any real data off the drive.</p>
<p>As you can tell, I’ve done this a bunch of times.</p>
<p>You really only need to smash the hard drive. In fact it’s probably best to smash the hard drive by itself rather than the whole laptop because you won’t be sure if you’ve done proper damage. They’re removable from most laptops via a screwdriver.</p>
<p>Yessss!!! done.
I guess I should have worn safety goggles, but fortunately it shattered pretty easily, hard drive is in shreds. That was fun!!! Thanks all</p>
<p>Yes - I should have said - use some eye protection since some sharp shards can go flying. It also helps to throw an old towel or piece of cardboard or something over the drive before hitting it with the hammer since that’ll usually prevent the parts from flying.</p>
<p>Would work to use a powerful magnet rather than brute force?</p>
<p>Brute force was free and very liberating too :)</p>
<p>We invested in some drive wipe software a few years ago, and have used it several times on various computers. Our county recycling center will take computer equipment, and they allow people to take/re-use what they want to salvage from it. So we wipe the hard drives and then drop it off there – just hoping someone gets some more use (even if they make a profit somehow, I don’t care). And if it isn’t reused, then at least we know it was properly disposed of in terms of components that might damage the environment if they are just dumped into a landfill.</p>
<p>Yes, fendrock. A strong magnet will do the trick.</p>
<p>The problem with the magnet and the wipe software is that you don’t really know the data’s irretrievable. It’s likely wiped out but difficult to be certain. With a sledge there’s little doubt. Plus, it can be fun.</p>
<p>Someone else could still use a desktop, and probably the laptop, by buying a new HDD which are usually inexpensive. It’s still worth donating the remainder of the PC even without the HDD.</p>
<p>Took apart the hard drive I wanted to destroy and found the two strongest magnets I’ve ever seen inside. Maybe they can be used to wipe the disk clean, however how could the disk turn right through them and not be wiped out is beyond me.</p>
<p>We have a really strong electromagnet in the office which we use for wiping disks. We have a really big data-center and a ton of storage arrays and we need to upgrade them from time to time.</p>
<p>By the way, the magnets inside the hard drive are rare earth (neodymium) magnets. There are quite a few videos on YouTube that show how to get them out which will simultaneously show you how to destroy the hard drive. Older hard drives had bigger (stronger) ones. I needed pliers and a screwdriver to pry mine apart.</p>
<p>Taking the hard drive out, and soaking it overnight in salt water should also do the trick. Only a determined government would have the high tech equipment to read the disk.</p>
<p>Only someone working in some really hush hush government agency or client confidential position would need to go through such lengths.</p>
<p>Personally, I’d use a zero-ing out utility like DD in unix and have it perform 2-3 cycles.</p>
<p>H tends to take our and destroy the hard drives. We save the magnets. Our D had a laptop whose hard drive fried itself with no help from us. We sent it to S and he couldn’t get anything off it, nor could any of his EEvor CS friends. We sent it to Data Hounds and they had no success retrieving anything either. Of course the destruction was due to manufacturing defect and not that D meant to lose all her hard work!</p>
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<p>There is also scrub: [scrub(1):</a> patterns on disk/file - Linux man page](<a href=“http://linux.die.net/man/1/scrub]scrub(1):”>http://linux.die.net/man/1/scrub)</p>
<p>Do that, then physically destroy the disk if paranoid.</p>