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Hard drive in question has sensitive unencrypted data but has failed and no longer responds so can't be wiped.

I'd like to physically destroy the said hard drive (3-1/2" desktop, spinning platter drive) before discarding it. What "home remedies" are good options?

EDIT: To the close voters: None of the other similar questions talk about techniques one can perform at your everyday home (hard drive degaussers, industrial shredders etc). IMHO this question is similar but uniquely distinct.

EDIT2: We're not talking about corporate data, national security data or personal banking data. Encrypted backups mostly, with some unencrypted personal identifiable information when the said drive was used to migrate data.

DeepSpace101
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    http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/43477/environmentally-friendly-ways-to-destroy-hard-drives or http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/11313/how-do-you-destroy-an-old-hard-drive – Fiasco Labs Sep 12 '15 at 04:58
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    @FiascoLabs: thanks but if read the answers there, none of them talk about techniques one can perform at your everyday home (hard drive degaussers, industrial shredders etc). The other talks about opening the drive up but nothing more. IMHO this question is similar but uniquely distinct. – DeepSpace101 Sep 12 '15 at 06:05
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    I've found disassembly, hacksaw or a hammer to be pretty effective on dead drives. All are cheap, disassembly allows you to use the head servo motor to mess with the platters before hammer whack. – Fiasco Labs Sep 12 '15 at 06:37
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    Putting this as a comment because not everybody is an amateur pyromaniac who whips this stuff up at home with ingredients bought from art shops, but it turns out thermite isn't *that* hard to make and does a really good job. Melts a hole right through the drive, both casings and platters. That data is GONE! – CBHacking Sep 15 '15 at 05:44
  • @CBHacking Damn, now I want to try this. – timuzhti Sep 18 '15 at 13:57
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    @CBHacking: Pro tip: put your thermite in a small ceramic flowerpot with a hole at the bottom. The pot withstands the heat and does a great job at keeping the thermite together during the reaction, funneling the 2000+°C molten iron onto the HD. (Please don't try this at home. Try it out side ;)...) – fgysin Jun 16 '16 at 09:18
  • @fgysin: Yep, that's how we do it. Helps keep the reaction from spraying molten metal all over the yard, too, although it *will* melt straight through the drive so don't put anything flammable underneath! – CBHacking Jun 16 '16 at 22:37
  • Build a charcoal fire, and heat to a red heat. You probably want a brick enclosure for the fire. Also works for SSDs, mobile phones, tablets, SD cards, CDRoms etc. Alternatively, grind the device to dust. This is what companies like Shred-IT do. – Ben Aug 16 '17 at 13:37

7 Answers7

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You want fast and simple?

Step 1: Try and take it apart. If you have the right screwdrivers, great, if not, just go to the next step.

EDIT2: Also use sandpaper on the platters before smashing them. It's very hard to smash into small enough pieces, and very hard to sand afterwards. If you can spend a bit of money, there are also dedicated kits, such as DiskStroyer which provide instructions. Apparently, they also provide a magnet and screwdrivers.

Step 2: Have at it with the biggest, heaviest metal hammer you have. Hit the platters a few times and it should shatter. (EDIT: NB: Make sure you smash the logic board (all the green stuff) up decently as well. Modern HDDs have 32-64 MBs of cache, and SSHDs have around 8 GB, and we don't want anyone to get a single bit)

Step 3: Find a big magnet and go over the disk a few times.

Step 4: Find a really hot flame, and melt the data off. A good gas flame can get up to 1200 °C, easily enough to demagnetise even the toughest materials.

And you're done! Send your now thoroughly unusable drive into the bin, or a recycling center, or whatever else you do to dispose of electronics.

EDIT: To be completely honest, I would do this to an encrypted drive as well, with the logic that any drive needing encryption should be disposed securely to prevent the exploitation of vulnerabilities in the encryption discovered in the future.

timuzhti
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  • I don't find step 3 and 4 simple, as the TS asked. Most people don't have a big magnet nor a hot flame that can do this and know how to do this safely without destroying the house as well. Besides that, if you're really paranoid, distribute the platter parts over different bins. As it's metal, it will probably be recycled anyway if you put it in any bin in town or elsewhere. – SPRBRN Sep 12 '15 at 13:50
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    Meh, propane torches are a dime a dozen. – Fiasco Labs Sep 12 '15 at 18:01
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    Depending on if you have an induction or gas stove, you can, using the stove, perform step 3 or 4 respectively. – timuzhti Sep 13 '15 at 02:36
  • if the Disks conduct electricity, then passing electricity through them might work as it creates an EM field. what do you guys think – JOW Sep 15 '15 at 10:11
  • Can you stick it in a microwave for a minute? – gh0st Sep 16 '15 at 00:00
  • @gh0st, that would most likely fry the logic board, so if you have time, definitely do that as well :) Unsure of the effect on the platters though. – timuzhti Sep 16 '15 at 07:23
  • +1 for this: To be completely honest, I would do this to an encrypted drive as well, with the logic that any drive needing encryption should be disposed securely to prevent the exploitation of vulnerabilities in the encryption discovered in the future. – Chethan S. Sep 20 '15 at 10:05
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    Step 3 pro tip: magnetic HDDs already contain some pretty seriously strong magnets. Don't get yourself caught in between. – user Oct 13 '15 at 08:57
  • @SPRBRN Powerful magnets are rather inexpensive and easy to get: http://www.amazon.com/b?node=1265130011 – recognizer Feb 12 '16 at 18:54
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    @Alpha3031: I took apart all my old hard disks over the last years (bonus: you can use the magnets you find inside on your fridge)... But shattering the actual data platter seems unlikely. The ones I had were made from fairly sturdy metal - you can bend them, scratch them, sure... but shattering? – fgysin Jun 16 '16 at 08:01
  • @fgysin For aluminium platters, you'd want to use power tools to grind it to bits. A large percentage of hard disks have ceramic or glass platters though. Might want to go through and grind it anyway, and keep the hard disk in a Ziploc bag, if you have a power drill + the right attachments or something else suitable at hand. – timuzhti Jun 16 '16 at 08:37
  • @Alpha3031: Hmm, funny, I've never encountered one of these ceramic platter disks. The fairly common WD Caviar Green for example use proper metal platters (not aluminium though, I'm my feeling isn't off). – fgysin Jun 16 '16 at 08:43
  • Smash wth a hammer several times? What platters do you have? Mine seems to be made of glass or something. Putting them in the oven made them burst into very small pieces. – Thomas Weller Aug 11 '16 at 20:01
  • @ThomasWeller Some platters are metal, some are ceramic and some are glass. I've mostly had metal and glass. (sample size of 3 XD) – timuzhti Aug 12 '16 at 09:34
  • How successful would setting them on fire after drowning them in gasoline be? Does that get hot enough to completely destroy it, or would that leave them recoverable? – Mast Aug 21 '17 at 14:18
  • @Mast, I'd recommend thermite over gasoline. It's still relatively cheap and easy to obtain. Ideally, you'd want to be able to guarantee the flame reaches above 1200 degrees Celsius, which would demagnetise pretty much everything. I'm not sure what the exact Curie point of the modern cobalt alloys though, but even the lower flame temperature of gasoline should suffice, provided adequate air supply. – timuzhti Aug 22 '17 at 01:39
  • Last time I destroyed harddisks there was no need at all for a big hammer. Put the platters in some towel, and bend. Given they were flexible as crystal, the slightest bend made them shatter into thousand pieces - making it actually dangerous without the towel. – phresnel Jun 26 '19 at 07:08
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First, write it over on the sector-level with random data. You can do this multiple times.

After that, you can take it apart with a screwdriver.

In your place I would use simple sandpaper to destroy the magnetized data layer on the plates mechanically.

Extension: It is also highly suggested to destroy its electronic, sometimes it contains also a flash ram for cache or for service data, which is also persistent data of the drive which you want to destroy.

peterh
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Electric drill

If you have any kind of electric drill or cordless screwdriver the easiest and quickest way is to just drill a dozen holes through them.

  • The disk housing is generally made from aluminium, which is fairly soft. Any kind of metal drill bit (probably even the ones used for brick walls) will do the trick easily.
  • Make sure to drill the holes in various places and pay attention to actually punch the contained data disks.
  • The entire procedure is very quick and quite safe, although wearing eye protection is recommended when drilling metal. (Although bashing the thing with a big heavy hammer has its own merits, even if not very efficient ;))
fgysin
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  • Bashing with a big hammer does not work. Disk housings are too strong. Using a drill is not really safe, either, unless you fix the harddisk and carry safety goggles. You don't want sharp things rotating at 3000 rpm and suddenly snapping off. Furthermore, the discs inside may be unflexible as crystal, so may basically explode upon exercising force upon them. Therefore, -1, if I could. – phresnel Jun 26 '19 at 07:06
  • @phresnel I wasn't recommending the hammer technique, but it does work - just requires a large enough hammer or some patience. (Trust me, I have done this.) I edited my response to make that clearer. – fgysin Jul 01 '19 at 08:40
  • @phresnel As for safety... Even if a data disk would break it would be contained by the aluminium housing. But of course, when drilling metal eye protection is always sound advice, I thought that went without saying. Updated answer accordingly. – fgysin Jul 01 '19 at 08:43
  • @fgysub: "just requires a large enough hammer or some patience." -> Believe me, I am not a weak person, regularly carrying two crates of watter bottled in glass, weighing about 25-35 kg (sometimes including other purchases), over 100 m and into the third floor without taking a single break. And I've tried hammering a harddisk for many minutes. With hammers and picks. The noise alone can be harmful and deafening. The harddisk case was not even punctured. Have you even tested this method? Just because it's aluminum it doesn't mean it can't be robust - cars of several tons in weight drive on alu! – phresnel Jul 01 '19 at 08:55
  • "I thought that went without saying. " -> Yes, unless it's your first time and you totally underestimate the robustness of a disk, because nothing else in the household is as robust. And unless you have no experience drilling - again, a harddisk rotating at 3000 rpm is all but funny and potentially risky for life. – phresnel Jul 01 '19 at 09:01
  • @phresnel Why would the hard disk be rotating at 3000 rpm? This might come as a shock to you, but I'd suggest _removing the hard disk from your PC_ before starting to drill into it... And if THAT doesn't go without saying you should probably stick to the non-physical ways of destroying your data... – fgysin Jul 01 '19 at 14:48
  • "Why would the hard disk be rotating at 3000 rpm?" --> Because you said "cordless screwdriver". Not more, not less. Admittedly, cordless ones are typically not that fast, but pieces spinning at only 700 rpm is funny enough already. Btw, have you ever noticed that people in general resort to insults, irony and sarcasm when they lack arguments? – phresnel Jul 08 '19 at 09:32
  • This worked quite well for me. You will get better results with a 1/2 inch drill and a good sharp bit. I ruined the bit after the seventh or eighth drive – kevinskio Jul 08 '19 at 18:38
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Homely style

  • Hammer it down as much as possible(with nails punched? Better!), flame it with gasoline, soil it with a mix of ash, clay and oil.

  • If you have acids (families with farm house would have it), soak in them (concentrated ones).

  • If you managed to open, scratch the discs as much as possible and bend it. Punch holes and now distribute them across non bio trash cans.

But, who will keep too much sensitive data unencrypted?

Nikhil_CV
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  • Yeah, but a thoroughly deformed and flamed hard disk won't hold anything useful, isn't it? – Nikhil_CV Sep 16 '15 at 08:35
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    And one byte of data won't give you any information without context. Unless it's 42, in which case it's The Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. – dr_ Sep 16 '15 at 08:44
  • @dr01 The minimum amount of data you can recover (or not) from a HDD is a single full sector. On classic drives, that's 512 bytes; on Advanced Format drives, that's 4096 bytes. Depending on what the data is about, that's a lot of context. – user Oct 13 '15 at 08:56
  • @MichaelKjörling Alpha3031 was talking about one byte only, not a full hd sector. – dr_ Oct 13 '15 at 09:02
  • @dr01 Yes, but you don't get partial sector reads, so it's either a whole sector or nothing. – user Oct 13 '15 at 13:13
  • Depends very much on how you're reading it. In-drive electronics might not read partial sectors, but real data-recovery specialists certainly do. – Toby Speight Aug 16 '17 at 16:24
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Melt the platters with thermite! The heat will not just rearrange the parts that hold the magnetic pattern but also completely demagnetize the metal, rendering the parts unreadable even if someone were able to put them back in order.

melting platters

DIY instructions in German with more pretty pictures.

David Foerster
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The simpliest way is to use this gel, it's an alcaline cream, free to buy : Super Shumanit I don't have an international description for it, but I'm sure it is a wide-used one. It dissolves SSD's or HDD plates =)

Alexey Vesnin
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First, encrypt the hard drive with something like truecrypt. Then wipe it with Dban several times with default settings. Then install windows on the operating system. Then fill the free space with data. Then encrypt the hard drive again. Then wipe the hard drive several times again. Next, take the platter(s) out of the hard drive, along with the small circuit board. Smash any solid state chip on the circuit board with a hammer. Then take the platter and sand it down with a dremel or sand paper. Then take the platter and soak it in acid. Then shatter the platter with the hammer (if the platter does not shatter, cut it into pieces with wire cutters). Take those pieces, along with the smashed solid state chips, and smelt them over a fire.

Billy Bob
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    That's rather a lot of effort to go through when you can simply run the platters through a belt sander and get the same effect. – Mark Jun 15 '16 at 22:20
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    The question notes that the drives are no longer reliably responsive – DeepSpace101 Jun 16 '16 at 15:32