[SOLVED] What to do with obsolete drives?

[dg27]

I guess like a lot of people, especially those with more than one desktop, over the years Iv'e gone through a lot of HDDs. I upgraded a lot of them as capacities increased and prices came down. In my two current systems my storage and backup drives are all a minimum of 1 TB and mostly 2-4 TB.

I have limited space and have started going through old drives, checking if they work, and reformatting without allocating the space. I have a dock to do this.

I have over a dozen working drives (mostly WD with a few Seagate), but they are invariably only 400-750 GB.

If I decide to dispose of them, should I sledgehammer them first?

Like I said, I've reformatted them but, I'm concerned because even I have recovery software that could recover data.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Like I said, I've reformatted them but, I'm concerned because even I have recovery software that could recover data.

MBR or GPT is cleared but the data is still there. You can overwrite the data to solve this.

I would keep them If you have a use. Otherwise you get rid of them.

One way is to sell them for a little money.

If you really want to get rid of them, you can always destroy them if you have sensitive data. A good beating or shattering of the platters will work.

 

[USAFRet]

Dispose?
Disassemble for the fridge magnets.
Break the platters.

Or, DBAN wipe and sell for $10 each.

 

[Remeca]

There is some software that can more reliably clean HDDs by formatting and then filling the hdd with data, to overwrite the old data, since just formatting doesn't delete the data, it just marks the sectors with data as writable. Even that isn't 100% foolproof if somebody has enough time and expertise. If the data is that sensitive, the only way to guarantee the files are gone is to physically destroy them. For most cases though, the format/overwrite method is enough.

 

[USAFRet]

There is some software that can more reliably clean HDDs by formatting and then filling the hdd with data, to overwrite the old data, since just formatting doesn't delete the data, it just marks the sectors with data as writable. Even that isn't 100% foolproof if somebody has enough time and expertise. If the data is that sensitive, the only way to guarantee the files are gone is to physically destroy them. For most cases though, the format/overwrite method is enough.

DBAN as I mentioned above is proof against pretty much everyone except the NSA. And maybe them as well.
And if you are a target of the NSA...this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb3Xa1h_RqM&vl=en

 

[jsmithepa]

should I sledgehammer them first?

If you have national security data, or something an Ex may use against you!

 

[Math Geek]

my community college has a degausser and then an electric log splitter

bit of overkill but still a lot of fun to play with. you may be able to locate a machine as well at your local college if you wish to permanently destroy the drives.

but a simple program like DBAN and then selling them for a few bucks makes a lot more sense.

 

[fzabkar]

Please don't destroy the drives. There are plenty of charities who would gladly repurpose them. Simply writing zeros to the user area is enough to render your data unrecoverable. All the stories you hear to the contrary are just FUD.

 

[Remeca]

Please don't destroy the drives. There are plenty of charities who would gladly repurpose them. Simply writing to zeros to the user area is enough to render your data unrecoverable. All the stories you hear to the contrary are just FUD.

I agree, I just don't like making absolute statements. Even if I had very sensitive information on a drive, I would trust the overwrite method and sell them.

 

[popatim]

Depends on the value of the drive, often the board is the only thing worth money.

 

[dg27]

Thanks for all the replies. I'll probably destroy a couple of 160GB and whatever IDE there are.

DBAN sounds like a good idea. A NYC schoolteacher lives in my building and I was thinking of asking him if his school could use some of the bigger drives (some are WD Caviar Blacks). But I do want to make sure these are securely wiped.

The data on these drives was deleted using WinDirStat, using the 'permanent' mode. Does that actually delete it?

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Yea some of those older drives really dont have much use.

 

[Math Geek]

i hold onto a couple IDE drives since they still show up in my shop every now and then. i'm down to one now and don't think i'll need more than that, but it's been nice having a couple to replace dead ones in older systems people are still holding onto.

but if you don't have a chance of being asked to replace one, then it's probably pretty safe bet to get rid of IDE drives at this point.

 

[dg27]

Thanks. I administer three desktops and moved all of them to SATA HDD then SSD boot drives years ago. I agree that the IDEs are pretty much boat anchors at this point. (I had a tough time finding an inexpensive dock that works with IDE, but I did.)