Old hard drives

[Zorba]

Quickest and easiest: Drill about 3 holes through the entire drive in the platter area. Nobody this side of an NSA type organization will be able to make any sense of it whatsoever.

If they're easily installed in a computer - AND - you want someone to be able to reuse them but remain secure, use one of the many "secure erase" utilities - some BIOSes have them built in nowadays.

[Lonestargrizzly]

Do they have Chip's Challenge on them?!? Or the old Windows skiing game on them?! I miss those old games!

[RedBluff]

Double jack'em.

[waawaaweenie]

https://youtu.be/VTV9BUONb9Y

[Cactus_Tim]

I have one of these that I use:

HD-5T Degausser

[meno377]

I found a box filled with 10-12 old hard drives while cleaning out the garage.

What is the best way to destroy them?

Smallest is a Caviar 2250 250MB largest is a Western digital WD300 30GB.

Lots of old RAM, and video and other motherboard cards.

Does anyone even use old D-RAM any more?

If you're savvy with computers, save them. Great cheap storage. An extra place for iTunes backups Pics, Docs, etc. Golden rule: You don't have any backups unless you have at least three.

[ElDub1950]

How about old 3.5" floppy disks?

I had a bunch with pictures on them that I copied off an old computer that was about to die. Just now got around to copying them over to my new laptop and saving them on a CD.

But I would like to destroy the old disks. Same way? Magnet and then just throw away?

Unless the pics are of you doing something illegal, why worry. It's not like data that could be used for identity theft. No one wants you vacation pictures.

[blackberg]

laptop drives are made of glass, hit them in the right spot with the right force and they shatter
-bb

[stilly]

I found a box filled with 10-12 old hard drives while cleaning out the garage.

What is the best way to destroy them?

Smallest is a Caviar 2250 250MB largest is a Western digital WD300 30GB.

Lots of old RAM, and video and other motherboard cards.

Does anyone even use old D-RAM any more?

In all honesty, if you go all tweak mode on them and get the TORX screwdrivers to take them apart, you will be rewarded with severl REALLY cool things.

1. VERY strong magnets that you can use to do some crazy things with.

2. Silver drive platters that, once removed you can tie string through and hang them in your fruit trees to hopefully keep away the birds. I have not tried that because all I ever had were CDs, but if they suggest tieing foil and cds up in your trees, these are much more heavy duty so what could they hurt?

It may take about 5 minutes per drive to do that.

[Carsgunsandchics]

Expose the platter, place your ground lead of your welder on one side and strike an arc opposite the ground. Guaranteed they'll never pull any info regardless of how good they are.

[Untamed1972]

Unless the pics are of you doing something illegal, why worry. It's not like data that could be used for identity theft. No one wants you vacation pictures.

This is true. Could prolly just tape them up in a box and toss the box. Then some future culture can dig up the land fill and try to read them to see what us ancients were up too LOL.

[glockman19]

I decided to recycle the drives and circuit boards. So fat I've been able to reclaim .25 ozt. in gold. out of 2 drives and one older sound and video boards. The magnets are very powerful and I'll use the platters for target practice.

[Tripper]

A quarter ounce of gold?

[glockman19]

A quarter ounce of gold?

Yes...my total gold reclaimed was .62 .76 Troy ounces. If it comes out at 22kt. It's value is $694.80 $845.48. It all came in the form of solid gold pins from hard drive circuit boards. I also scavenged 16 powerful magnets 2 from each of the 8 hard drives.

I'll get the torch out and melt it down later into a solid round or bar once I get just over an ounce. I still have some boards left to break down.

[ldsnet]

I disassembled them and recycled the parts . . . those solid aluminum frames add up quick.