Ways to *REALLY* erase a hard drive?

Greysky · 2005-02-11T04:58:03+00:00

I recently had a 80 gig Maxtor hard drive die on me. Though it was still under warranty (just) I decided a much better use for it was to turn it into a show-and-tell for the local elementary school kids. I finally managed to get the cover off the thing, exposing the inner platters. Someone told me a Torx 10 would fit those crazy screws on the cover plate - they were wrong. I had to drill them off. Now, I need to know a sure fire way of wiping data off the platters for good. The machine died before I could erase it inside the computer, so far I have a bunch of 'super magnets' which I dropped directly onto the platters and let them stay there overnight. Do you think this is enough? I would like to get them as deleted as I can possibly get them, but still be able to use the drive as a demonstration device for the kids. Thanks.

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John Woodgate 21 years ago

I read in sci.electronics.design that Barry Lennox wrote (in ) about 'Ways to *REALLY* erase a hard drive?', on Sat, 12 Feb 2005:

I made a magnetizer for model railway motor magnets that way about 50 years ago. Rectifier straight off the 240 V mains to a 20 uF cap through

10 kohms. Switch to connect the cap to a 'no-volt coil' from a motor starter - lots of turns. Custom-made magnetic circuit (the railway nerd provided that from his machine-shop).

Interesting that the switch current is initially zero and finally zero, so no arcing problems, but in between, about 2 A.

Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. The good news is that nothing is compulsory. The bad news is that everything is prohibited. http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

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Reg Edwards 21 years ago

Try a hammer and chisel. It works for me.

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me 21 years ago

just put it all in a hole in the ground...

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Barry Lennox 21 years ago

Just a magnetic degausser works, but you need a reasonably powerful device. IIRC you require about 3500-4500 gauss for HDDs and DAT tapes, while most of the low-cost commercial devices are around 1000 gauss.

There's some info at

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I used to use one that look a little like a microwave oven, and the manufacturers blurb stated it used a charged cap dumped through a coil. Never saw a schematic or got to look at it's guts however.

Barry Lennox

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keith 21 years ago

So would folding, spindling, or mutilating.

Keith

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TCS 21 years ago

and WTF is it to widlarize something?

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Michael A. Terrell 21 years ago

Are you a newbie or something? :) Do a web search for Bob Widlar.

Beware of those who suffer from delusions of adequacy! Michael A. Terrell Central Florida

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Guy Macon 21 years ago

That's because you didn't click on the "groups" link. It takes you right to a post defining the term.

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Tom Del Rosso 21 years ago

Are those the times before the first sector error?

Reply in group, but if emailing add 2 more zeros and remove the obvious.

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Guy Macon 21 years ago

Those were the times before DOS scandisk running in a looping bat file stopped with an error.

I am surprised that I haven't seen a bunch of posts from folks who have tried this. Doesn't everybody has an old 100MB drive or two laying about?

Guy Macon

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Tom Del Rosso 21 years ago

I'm thinking maybe most of the other sectors were still readable.

Yeah, but I'm not sure of their reliability with the cover on, so it would be hard to compare. A new drive might last longer. OTOH, a new drive might be more sensitive. I don't know if I could do a meaningful test.

Reply in group, but if emailing add 2 more zeros and remove the obvious.

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Guy Macon 21 years ago

It depends. If the platter was damaged, yes. If the head was filled with oxide, it might be all bad reads. If I ever do it again I will test for that.

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Barry Lennox 21 years ago

You are correct, nothing! That's surprising.

Nevertheless to "Widlarize" something, is to take a hammer and beat the thing into little bits. Bob Pease has often written about it.

Barry Lennox.

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Ben Bradley 21 years ago

I'd get a warranty replacement drive, and then get a cheap computer at a thrift store to open up. But that's me.

Torx, schmorx. The first step in doing "physical experiments" on a hard disk drive is using a Dremel (brand of handheld hobby motorized tool) with a cutoff wheel to cut head slots in the screws for a regular flat-blade screwdriver which then easily removes the screws. It's easy, works great, and it's not like you're going to have to put it together so that no one knows it's been taken apart.

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