By Tim Ferguson, 17 July 2008 10:00
Disposing of computer hard drives in a secure and safe way has become a hot topic, especially after the high profile data leaks in the past year.
Whether it is ID thieves after personal information; or data leaks that could affect business or even national security, making sure data can't be retrieved from old hard drives is very much on the agenda.
So bearing this in mind, silicon.com picked five ways to deal with your unwanted hard drives.
This is the Verity Systems VS7000 manual hard drive destroyer which crushes the hard drive with the turn of a handle. The destroyer bends the hard drive platter so any data on it can never be read again.
Photo credit: Tim Ferguson
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Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. MusicFan
Or you could just take the hard drive apart with a combination of screwdrivers and brute force, then use the platter as a coffee matt!
2. Sarah
How about just using some software to securely erase the data - like Darik's Boot and Nuke.
Surely that is more environmentally friendly than creating a pile of metal that needs to be disposed of in landfill.
3. Gerard Wilson
"Standard" way for a long time is simply dissemble, remove platters, use blow torch on platters. Wonder if Will It Blend have tried it? ;-)
4. anonymous
None of these is really foolproof, but the one I witnessed in Dublin on a recent assignment was. This company specialising in destroying data and providing a destruction certificate have a large bowl looking device with a chain centrally mounted - a BIG chain - each link about the size of 2 men's feet side by side - and they load the bowl with drives and seal it and then the chain starts to rotate at speed with a great noise. After about 5 minutes it stops and everything in the bowl is reduced to bits of about a quarter of an inch in size and as there were loads of drives in this destruction process, the possibility of reconstituting any individual drive is as close to impossible as to be negligible.
5. GALLEY SLAVE#41
MY wife can destroy anything electrical just by touching it.
And her mother can do the same just with one look!!!!
6. ian bremner
My prefered if slightly anti-social method of destroying these things is to use an Anglegrinder, if the cutting doesnt kill it the heat and vibration surely will. Not good for clean areas or neighbour relations tho.
7. Haydn Rees
If you gave it to William Shatner, he could probably persuade it to destroy itself.
8. Toby Rowland
Or you could just pay a secure disposal company about £20 and have the whole PC shredded into tiny pieces.... quietly, efficiently and ecologically friendly. They give a certificate of destruction and recycle the bits and it's a lot easier than an angle grinder!