Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

I wouldn't waste my time with erasing software since they are not being used again. A lump hammer across the platters will render them useless.

Reason is the head sits a nat's wisker above the platter when operating and cannot follow any kind of surface irregularites. Moreso the ones a lump hammer can inflict.

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

Take apart the drives; remove the platters; drill 12 holes around the circumference and then mount a clock mechanism in the middle. Hang on your wall for a nice art-deco timepiece.

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

One option smash them open then take a angle grinder to the platters.

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

We use Shred-IT and get them to dispose of all our disks now.

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

CCleaner has an option to set the delete pass at 35 times, more than enough.

Then snap off a few pins on the drives too.

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

Or just buy a larger angle grinder and go through the whole drive :D

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

Or just toss them into an active volcano. :D

It might be easier to take them to PC World for a clean-up and they'll probably disappear forever... :D

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

Honestly Rob, if I were you, I would forget that you ever asked. Clearly they love and respect you but at the same time are taking the.... Hey, I laughed :)

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

If speed is the only concern, nothing beats the speed and thoroughness of thermite.

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

I think what I've learnt from this thread is that the destructive approach is preferred simply because it's more fun :D

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

Woohoo! Break them, you know you'll enjoy it. However, telling the boss that you blew up the kitchen as a result of microwaving hdd platters and the all important cup of water(ignore the sparks) may not be the absolute answer. If I'm wrong heyho, it's not unusual :)

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

Gutman was designed for another era, when drives were not stretching the media capacity to the limit. One overwrite pass will defeat anything except what the security services may have.

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

Another good reason to smash the drive to pieces.....

Re: Secure Hard Disk Disk Erase
 

"Gutmann", in all 35 passes was never needed. It's a collection of wipe patterns all targeted to different drive encoding methods. If you know the method used, you only need to run the pattern for that drive.

The paper Gutmann wrote as well theorising recovery from overwrite data was also based entirely on theory and had no basis on what is, or was ever actually possible.

There hasn't been any recorded evidence of any data been recovered from an overwrote drive, and the whole "the heads don't track perfectly" thing where it MAY be possible to recover what the previous write was would require manual per bit recovery, and just isn't really at all feasible.

Even the security services can't recover from one a one pass wipe.

Still, I've worked for many companies that have to dispose of drives, and the favoured method of most of them is shredding.
It's fast and worry free, you see the drives go in, you see the ground up drives come out. It's a lot faster than having to bother with wipes.