My Way to Securely Destroy Hard Drives 

:) most of the time, that chip gets damaged when the drive gets smashed. Once the chip is damaged, it is effectively neutralized. Most people don't even bother with it as it is a quick store of memory. Only the last print or prints would be in there anyway. And with the registers setup they way they are, it would be randomized ... it would be pretty tough to rebuild a full document from that ram chip... but it could be possible. So, it is better to destroy it... Oh, and nice videos :) I like your 360º stuff. I miss DC and the east. Thank you for sharing your outings.

The spindle is a pain. You will need to hold the axel still as you unscrew them. I find that these screws are really soft. They will strip relatively easily. If they strip, just bend the drive plates where they are. Bending them is considered acceptable for most businesses these days. Only the ceramic ones can shatter and they are getting harder to find in drives honestly. I would guess that your drives have metal plates that you can bend up. Let me know if you have more problems or questions. It sounds like you are pretty close to done on this one. Good luck.

@@badideametals okay...now done 11 drives. I found the 16 inch long gigantic screwdriver was the most efficient tool for bending the platters. Some of them the PCBs were upside down so they had to be removed before I could remove the memory chip. I assume its only the rectangular chip? For the 2 laptop drives, they were the ceramic type and lucky I bashed them with the hammer inside a plastic bag and wearing my safety glasses...cant be too careful. The only thing I couldn't complete was removing the memory chips from those 2 laptop drives as they just wouldn't budge. Is there a way to destroy them without removing them? I don't want to break the PCB. I guess i'd need a blow torch which I don't have or could I hold them over a gas burner?

Sure .... if you have that equipment, you will not be looking for alternate means... a shredder costs between $20,000 and $30,000 on average. As for the power, that is a pretty strong shock for a single drive. If you work in an environment that produces hundreds to thousands of drives worth of scrap, that may make sense to invest. If you are a small but growing company, you may need to come up with other solutions... which is where I come in. I want the gold and aluminum, so I offer to do this for free. As long as it is delivered or dropped off to my scrap yard :) But sure, you are correct... shred is faster ... and arguably easier.

SSDs do randomize data placement and the erase does happen when data is written back to them, but the data does persist if it is not requested to be deleted. The company I work for outside of bad idea metals destroys everything on the drives for data safety. All chips are thoroughly crushed and shredded. Most people just worry about the spinning platters and ignore cache ic chips…

@@badideametals the data is moved from that cell, that cell is wiped and it starts over. Most SSDs work like that but some newer ones operate a little different.

@@badideametals the boards are usually removed when scrapped, if someone damages the platters and leaves the one chip no one is going to get anything for id theft, ssds have really small cache sizes because the storage is already fast and the only data being saved usually most often programs but no data involved with them. As a hacker we could care less about hard drives or getting anything like that because we can send any malware or Kelloggs to gain access to everything without someone knowing, or sitting right outside someone's house and grabbing data packets off the router. Nothing is secure anymore, even two factor authentication can be hacked

When you say "Data is deleted than rearranged every time you add something or delete something." I'm a little confused. Does that mean old deleted content is gone the moment you add anything else to your hard drive? I have heard that data can still be recovered on SSDs. What is the best way to make erased data full unrecoverable on an SSD?

Degaussing is a technique, but some experts argue how reliable that process is… also, I would need really strong magnets … stronger then hard drive magnets… it is not something I am equipped to do for those who give me drives and trust the data to be destroyed. So for me, drive destruction down to metal components is my way :) … but yes, you are correct that it is an option. As for the hammer, I process the chips for gold, and the hammer sends the pieces everywhere. But if someone else who did not care about the gold were following this demo, then yes, a hammer would be great! And finally, I have not thought to use sand paper. It could work I guess…

Most of those can still have the stroage recovered. Nothing is on the chips besides for some data but it stored on the platters as well unless your dealing with new storage like solid state, no platters than. Using a screwdriver while the hard drive beofre taking it apart is very effective. If you look on the back of each hard drive they have a small piece of silver tape where you can enter the screwdriver. While the hard drive is spinning let the screwdriver damage the platter. For hard drives that have more than one platter, break them into tiny pieces and throw half away one week, than the other half the next week. For those that can melting the platters down is full proof. There are several methods that can work but even more that fail to delete data.

I find almost all are a torx. Those that are are often are T5 or T6.

@@badideametals thanks. I used the t8. I will try the t5 or t6.

Nope,they don’t work because the screw are just round circles and aren’t star shaped screws.

@@puppytoes6241 can you send a picture to my email? Channel name at gmail… no spaces. Or find a picture online and post the image link in the chat here? I can’t imagine … I am think it could be 2 things… first, it could be an Allen head… also known as hex. Or, sadly the head of the screw may be stripped so it is round now. They are pretty soft screws.

@@badideametals thank you for your help. I really appreciate it. This is from an old gateway tower that I have had sitting in my garage since 2007. Time to get rid of it.

I will be doing a video for that in a few weeks. You put them in a pot or crucible and cook them :) it is a process. It is fun.

Sort of… incineration is a good first step. They won’t melt, but they become brittle… then you can crush them to fine powder and pan the gold out… I am doing a video of this soon when the weather warms up around here.

Interesting :) I am not sure how well that works. Most companies I have worked for (in IT) would insist by way of company policy that drives be destroyed. "It is the only way to be sure" ... factory reset sounds more like a device such as a computer or tablet ... but who knows ... a factory reset on a drive would be interesting.

No, factory reset does not get rid of the old data. Its still there and can be retrieved by data recovery tools. The only way to truely erase it is to write over the old data multiple times which a factory reset does not do (Some professional operating systems provide this option but most dont).

Factory reset is just reinstalling your operating system. Anything deleted can be recovered if it is not overwritten with 3rd party software.

A small torque driver bit. It is a T5 or T6 depending on the drive company.

@@badideametals I just used a T9, for my old internat HDs

Now I understand you factory reset ... on your PC, yes, you can do a factory reset. I don't think the data is wiped beyond recovery though. The quick answer: Drives keep a list of where files are on the drive. This is called an index. When a program or file get deleted, most systems just remove the index entry. The data still sits on the drive until some other file gets written in the space newly made "available." The data still exists in that space though. If someone gets a drive, they can use specific software that will go through all sectors (spinning drives) and registers (SSD drives) and find what data is there. Then it will do it's best to put the data back together. Sometimes, the data is corrupt, and can't be completely put back together ... but many times, enough data is there to put together maybe a few passwords, or half a bank statement ... or parts of your identity ... Many people don't keep too many documents that really matter. But a drive can house passwords, personal data, browser history, In short, if you don't care too much about the data, then there is no issue. If you do care a little, factory reset will keep most people from accessing your data. If you are really worried that your data could find its way out to someone malicious, then you may not want to rely on the factory reset. But what are the chances your donated computer ends up in the worst hands possible? Probably pretty low. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Technically, the data persists on the platters and in the storage registers. The circuit board can be replaced on most drives with a board off an identical drive. Your recommendation is valid for some people for sure. My experience with government and academic agreements is such that they want the drive platters unreadable.

@@badideametals Thanks..

I am not sure what you want me to answer… wiping the disk? Or something else? This video was intended to teach how I destroy the drives. I do my gold refinement only when I have enough to make it worth my time.

Yes, which is why I recommend in the video that the chips are pulled off. Those IC chips "can" hold data in their memory registers. Not much, and that would be a real trick to put it all back together, but yes. I pull the chips off and refine them for their gold content. But for those who just want to be sure their data is off and gone, the chips can hold data.

@@badideametals Where and how do I bet get those chips recycled? And if you burn them, will they not emit toxic fumes?

@@sjkm4309 all electronics contain chemicals that need to be understood before processing. I incinerate and oxidize the carbon black exterior of the chips and crush them to dust. The gold is left exposed for refinement. You can probably pull the chips and sell them on eBay. You will need a lot to make any money though.

I have. It is an open source reformat tool. I don’t use it myself. I do a secure command line removal on Linux and BSD when I manage my own drives or drives of company partners who don’t request drive destruction. Although it has good reception with many, dban does not satisfy some government and private run industry requirements. Some of my partnerships include aerospace as well as local government agreements. Most people who ask me why I don’t reformat have not signed their name where I signed mine … on the documents that say that destruction is the requested and therefore agreed upon mode of secure data removal. I would consider using dban for future use personally, but I have the tools that work for me on the CLI already. Honestly, I don’t have enough experience with it to recommend it to others, or warn others of any potential issues. Being open source, that could mean both well reviewed by peer developers, as well as poorly vetted for hasty bug fixing. I would hate to find out after a compromise that a critical oversight was released as a stable software fix to the code base. But hey, that can happen in any software release :) Did I go too far? Sorry for the wall of text :). As a software dev by day, I don’t usually trust open source without a thorough prototype and beta test. Not when I have government holding my signatures…

I would not catch them on fire. Some of the circuitry is toxic when burned. Other then that, mechanical destructive processes are pretty safe.

I have a contract with a few companies for physical drive destruction. Also, there are many governments that require physical destruction instead of multi pass delete options.

@@badideametals idk man here we save the drives whether there are old or new

@@technicalsos1109 I agree that they "can" be saved. I am under agreements from multiple government policies and a few local businesses follow those same guidelines. I don't fight the policy. I just carry out the desired outcome. There are a few businesses that let me reuse their drives. I like doing that too :) ... especially when they are 3 or 4 TB drives with very low hours.

@@badideametals yeah i got new model Seagate baracuda dual platter 4tb drive that is 135 dollars but i got it in 5dollars 🤣 and still works 24/7 same as 2tb one that is 22 dollars but i got in 1 to 2 dollars too and both works flawless with decent health its really hard to watch people destroying the precious drives

Lol… don’t breath the fumes. But that should do something