# Disposing of hard drive **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 30, 2016, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118 "2016-05-30T20:44:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2016, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118/41 "2016-05-31T22:16:41Z")
> [@Bayard](#): > > While it depends on the size and speed of the drive, a single pass wipe of a HDD less than 1TB should be done in less than a day. If it’s running into multiple days, something has probably gone amiss. Which is kind of like carefully erasing a whole notebook (the bound paper kind) before you shred and burn it. Concur that there’s no need to use a digital wipe unless you’re going to give away the drive as a usable item, or are an Anonymous element. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118/42 "2016-06-01T07:34:29Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > [Microwave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ0qNQLLR80) If you stick a drive into a microwave you’ll fry the controller board but the microwaves won’t penetrate into the case and the platters will still be intact. Open the case up first and you’ll totally fry the platters. But if you are going to open up the case you can just as easily smash the platters with a hammer at that point. I haven’t watched the video so I don’t know what they did. ---
**Author:** ![Jesta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Jesta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jesta)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118/43 "2016-06-01T09:16:21Z")
I’d go for physical destruction myself, as I’ve treated drives pretty badly and they’ve still worked fine, no way I’d trust a tap or two or do the job, not that I’ve got anything to hide… Although, I do have a degaussing wand around here somewhere… ---
**Author:** ![edwardcoast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cab0a1/32.png) [@edwardcoast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwardcoast)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118/44 "2016-06-02T05:19:46Z")
> [@Bayard](#): > > While banging on a drive may be effective and cathartic, using a wipe tool such as DBAN is easy and provides feedback on whether it succeeded. For a normal person who just wants to keep their personal data out of the hands of crooks – or even law enforcement – that’s all you need. > > I’m a computer forensic examiner for a big tech company. If you correctly DBAN a drive (follow the directions!), whatever data may have been on it is gone for good. There is no way for me to recover it. I don’t think DBAN works on SSDs, but there are similar tools that do. > > I guess I can’t rule out the possibility that the NSA has some super duper quantum warp device that can recover data from properly wiped drives, but no method of doing so has ever been publicly demonstrated. And, really, if you’re worried about the NSA or FBI, you have bigger problems than a hard drive. > > Don’t futz around with guessing how hard you need to hit it. Just wipe it. I agree 100%. I use DBAN often on drives before discarding them. There is always paranoid talk about recovery, but so far no one has demonstrated they can recover anything from a hard disk successfully wiped by DBAN. Yeah, if you had the fate of the free world riding on it, physically destroy the disk sounds reasonable. As a precaution, we try to take failing drives out of service before they completely die so that DBAN can be run on them before they are discarded. For those that don’t know about DBAN, it is free and can be downloaded and it works on PCs and I believe there is a version of it for the Mac. However, if you remove the hard disk, you can put it in a PC or install it in a hard disk enclosure and run it off a PC to wipe it if you prefer DBAN run from a PC. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118/45 "2016-06-02T19:45:47Z")
I shoot them, which also gives me an excuse to go shooting. 🙂 But a drill or hammer will work as well. You are trying to crush or damage the platters inside. ---
**Author:** ![janeslogin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@janeslogin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/janeslogin)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2016, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118/46 "2016-06-06T20:23:15Z")
We had two old towers we needed to junk; an old Dell and an IBM with XP. To make tedious story short; we called Waste Management and they told us we had to take them to someplace in northern California which, according to Google, is 11 hours away! The magnets are fun. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118/47 "2016-06-08T18:22:46Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > 1. The drive was branded as a Glyph, which was sold to me as a quality, long-lasting drive (and it did last a long time). But in opening it up, I discovered that the actual drive was a Seagate. Is the dirty secret of hard drives that the guts are all made by the same company, or just a few companies? Did Glyph really add any value? The hardware may have been manufactured by Seagate, but it’s possible that Glyph wrote their own firmware and did their own testing, which could be better than Seagate’s (or it could be worse). Glyph claims to offer an “industry best” warranty, so it’s possible that you’re just paying more for the warranty, or it’s possible that they really have found a way to make drives more reliable, and thus can offer a better warranty because their drives don’t die. Or it’s possible it’s all marketing nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118/48 "2016-06-08T19:16:58Z")
> [@janeslogin](#): > > We had two old towers we needed to junk; an old Dell and an IBM with XP. > > To make tedious story short; we called Waste Management and they told us we had to take them to someplace in northern California which, according to Google, is 11 hours away! > > The magnets are fun. California has mandatory e-waste recycling. There should be a place in your city or county that handles this, maybe more than one place. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2016, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118/49 "2016-06-08T19:21:10Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > The hardware may have been manufactured by Seagate, but it’s possible that Glyph wrote their own firmware and did their own testing, which could be better than Seagate’s (or it could be worse). Glyph claims to offer an “industry best” warranty, so it’s possible that you’re just paying more for the warranty, or it’s possible that they really have found a way to make drives more reliable, and thus can offer a better warranty because their drives don’t die. Or it’s possible it’s all marketing nonsense. Thanks for the info. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disposing-of-hard-drive/756118.md?page=2)