And You Thought Your Computer Files...

[Hellion]

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...METRO/804290462

[Stymie]

I heard about this before.

Only way you can truely dump your old stuff.

Is to melt the Drive..

To nothing!

Like crack it open and burn it till it drips...

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

I can get stuff off a hard drive that has been formatted up to 5 times.

[Hellion]

I would rather do it this way,LOL!!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IrHHF08Yv5M

[Stymie]

I would rather do it this way,LOL!!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IrHHF08Yv5M

FUCK YEAH!!

[hunhee]

I can get stuff off a hard drive that has been formatted up to 5 times.

I heard that before, but what about AFTER five times? then is it deleted? Or is it garblie gook?

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Then I send it to a pro data recovery company and they get it.

[torn asunder]

can't you just wipe it with a really strong magnet?

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Yes. Like the one used at a junk yard that is used to pick up cars. Not sure if those are powerful enough to fully erase the fluctuations that are your data though.

[hunhee]

So like, does the really powerful magnet totally make the drive useless? Or is it just a 'tabular raza" (blank slate), where you can start from scratch...

[Shade Everdark]

Using a degausser.

Unfortunately, Hunhee, from what I know of it, degaussing a hard drive renders it useless, as (in theory anyway, I don't really do this myself) the degausser completely demagnetizes the drive.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Hard drives are shielded and the density of the platters is so high that it takes a super magnet or magnetic field to degause a hard drive. There are specific machines designed to do it... you cant just use a strong magnet. They stilkl take 2-5min to erase the drives and yes.. they are unusable afterwards. You can also detroy tapes this way... of all types... actually.. any recording media that uses magnetics.

BTW, it's not that it demagnatizes the drive... it pulls on the "switches" so hard, that it the wont go back the other way.

If you have only one or two drives to erase.. get a friend at a junk yard and have him use the big electromagnet on them.

[tanuki1985]

A friend of mine disposes of his old computers by crushing the hard drive to bits. He will literally stomp on it, hammer it, and whatever else he can do to rip it to shreds. He is the paranoid type, so he will go above and beyond to make sure that it is completely destroyed.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

I take them apart and make wind chimes out of the platters. The platters are perfectly round, perfetly flat and perfectly tuned. Every generation of drive uses a different density of material for the platters... so each cretes a differnt note.