Wiping out a non-functioning hard drive

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FunkyBoss

FunkyBoss

Pub Member / Supporter
Original poster
Mar 23, 2004
753
1
Chicagoland, IL
I have a hard drive that just went bad, that I believe is still under warranty, but doesn't seem to want to spin up and/or be recognized by the PC anymore. Fortunately, I have the data backed up somewhere else. Now, I'd like to send it in to be replaced, but there is some personal financial stuff on there that I'd rather not have employees of the hard drive company poking around through when they receive the drive.

Does anyone have any good suggestions on how to at least attempt to clear out a drive that doesn't want to be recognized by the PC anymore? I don't want to do anything like open it up as to not void the warranty. Since it's magnetic media, I assume a magnet might do the trick, but the question then would be where do I get one strong enough?

Going forward, I'll just have to be smarter and encrypt the data, to make it harder to mess with. Lesson learned!
 
mike123abc said:
Probably just better to smash the drive and get a new one. This is probably the cheapest alternative. If the drive is a couple years old you can probably find one the same size for $50. Even 1 TB drives are under $100 WESTERN DIGITAL Caviar® Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA II 7200 RPM 32MB Buffer Hard Drive Bulk at ZipZoomfly

If your data is confidential this is the best bet.
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Too funny you should mention that western digital drive, as that is the EXACT drive this happened too. It's only about 3 months old. Which is not my usual experience with a WD drive. I'd hate like heck to have to throw away a $100 that I paid for it though.
 
Yes, it IS possible to wipe using a very powerful magnet. I seriously doubt you'll find one sitting around.

Data recovery firms can also very effectively bulk erase any magnetic media. For far more than the drive cost.

To be completely thorough, you can do what the government sometimes does. Open the case. Remove each platter, assuming there's more than one. Use a rotary disc sander to completely remove all magnetic coatings. Smash what remains of the platters. Grind down the chips. Discard- or, if preferred, shred all parts into small pieces first.

Data is valuable. Media isn't. Bye bye $100.
 
FunkyBoss said:
Too funny you should mention that western digital drive, as that is the EXACT drive this happened too. It's only about 3 months old. Which is not my usual experience with a WD drive. I'd hate like heck to have to throw away a $100 that I paid for it though.
Click to expand...

Maybe that is why they are on sale for so cheap :eek:
 
FunkyBoss said:
...I'd rather not have employees of the hard drive company poking around through when they receive the drive.
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I guess it could happen, but I'm pretty sure they'll simply hook it up to some diagnostic equipment, confirm that "yeah, it's broken", and throw it in the trash.

Someone would have to remove the platters and put them in a working "shell" in order to retrieve your data. Why would someone do that, unless the NSA was after you ?
 
I could see the Chinese doing it. A "recycling" company, probably not hard to quickly insert the platter assembly into a shell, scan for secrets... Labor intensive yes, but what else is the Chinese government got to do with a few million people?
 
Go to a store that has those pads that disable anti theft tags and swipe it over them a couple of times or better yet find a metal scrap yard that has one of those magnetic cranes. That would do the trick.:D
 
FunkyBoss said:
Does anyone have any good suggestions on how to at least attempt to clear out a drive that doesn't want to be recognized by the PC anymore? I don't want to do anything like open it up as to not void the warranty. Since it's magnetic media, I assume a magnet might do the trick, but the question then would be where do I get one strong enough?

Going forward, I'll just have to be smarter and encrypt the data, to make it harder to mess with. Lesson learned!
Click to expand...

Do you have access to one of the older soldering GUNS? The kind that HUMS, and gets hot right away? They are basically a shorted-out transformer, and put out a massive magnetic field when activated. Just run it over the drive a few passes, and in a couple circles, and it'll wipe the drive.

I use to use one to do this as a pc field tech, and also to de-magnetize the old color tv (crt) screens, when they got messed up.
 
I agree with Mike. That's what I do here. Smash it beyond recognition. My time is too valuable to be dinking around with the warranty on an old hard drive.
 
digiblur said:
Only thing with that is the OP probably has to send the drive back in a state that meets the warranty requirements.
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Somehow I looked right over the fact it was still under warranty. I have a program called "Clearhdd 0" that I use and run it 10 times to make sure that it will be near impossible for anyone to retrieve the information.
 
John- I agree but you also have to do the prudent thing in a case scenario as the OP mentioned. In other words, consider the risk of the confidential data getting into the wrong hands vs. eating the loss of a $100 drive, EVEN IF it is under warranty.


I think having a fairly new drive fail like that is extremely rare. But the luck of the draw, fell and in this case, eat the cost and sleep at night knowing your confidential data is not compromised.
 
Don Landis said:
John- I agree but you also have to do the prudent thing in a case scenario as the OP mentioned. In other words, consider the risk of the confidential data getting into the wrong hands vs. eating the loss of a $100 drive, EVEN IF it is under warranty.
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Okay, but the person at the far end has to be interested in the data. The people that receive the drives wouldn't be the people the same people that would recover any working platters from the drives. In short it's a risk but incredibly low when there are far easier ways to go about getting the information.

Also, I'm not particularly cavalier about throwing away my hard earned money.

I think having a fairly new drive fail like that is extremely rare. But the luck of the draw, fell and in this case, eat the cost and sleep at night knowing your confidential data is not compromised.
Click to expand...

It's near the end of the infant mortality curve (3-4 months from new). If it doesn't fail in the infant mortality phase it will likely last for some time.

It's an extended u-shaped curve with (relatively) high early failures, then a long period of low failures until the end of the products design life when the failure rate rises again to complete the u. .

We deal with it all the time with complexes of servers and massive storage arrays measuring in the 1000s of spindles.
 

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