Wiping Old Drives

[maxland]

I found a home for all my old computers. A local group trains kids to refurbish and train other kids to use computers. I also have a batch of old hard drives. All are IDE. I don't have any ide controllers as all my current computers are SATA.

I'm worried that there is probably inappropriate materials on these drives.

Is there a way I can scramble or make unreadable the drives without a computer? I don't want to render the drives inoperable, just shredded.

 

[LoneEagle]

Hi,

Are you sure your mobo does not have an IDE port? I have both on mine.
Check with your manufacturer or look inside.

The only way I could think without a computer is like in the movies, a big magnet. How is it efficient? Not sure.

Reformating or removing partition will not do that. You really need to wipe it (write zeros over the whole hard drive). This can be a long process. Use google "free wipe hard drive" for example.

 

[hang-the-9]

I found a home for all my old computers. A local group trains kids to refurbish and train other kids to use computers. I also have a batch of old hard drives. All are IDE. I don't have any ide controllers as all my current computers are SATA.

I'm worried that there is probably inappropriate materials on these drives.

Is there a way I can scramble or make unreadable the drives without a computer? I don't want to render the drives inoperable, just shredded.

Why don't you use the old computers to do the work. Plenty of programs that will allow you to do a wipe on the drives, and you can probably use one system to do all of them if you have the space in the case and cables.

http://www.diskwipe.org/