HD Disposal

[High_Jumbllama]

What is the proper way to dispose of an HD with bad sectors? Since some data can still be read, simply tossing the drive is no good. Any ideas?

[Wombat]

I've actually had to develop code in this area because of work.

For your needs, check out the Scrub utility, free courtesy of Livermore Labs. http://www.llnl.gov/linux/scrub/scrub.html

[az]

Low level format? Physical destruction of platters? Depends on how important that data is.

[ZokesPro]

Do you think they could be recylced if you left it in the recycling box?

[Tjalfe]

take drive apart and run this : http://cgi.ebay.ca/4-dia-neodymium-m...QQcmdZViewItem
across each platter, before tossing the platters in seperate garbages

[ZokesPro]

The canadian government does about 5 or 6 low level formats, then they drills holes through the platters before they throw them in the garbage or recycling box. I know this cause I asked the guy who's in charge of taking care of old HDD's.

[schmosef]

What is the proper way to dispose of an HD with bad sectors? Since some data can still be read, simply tossing the drive is no good. Any ideas?

I was going to suggest something similar to what zokes posted.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Two words: Hydrochloric acid.

[Dilitante1]

cheap solution.......22 rifle and put a round thru it

[High_Jumbllama]

Do you think they could be recylced if you left it in the recycling box?

Umm no as this was a hard drive in a server that contained a copy of pretty much everything.

[High_Jumbllama]

If only I could take it apart, scratch the hell out of it and coat something on the platters that would grow some good mold. Less troublesome than HCL acid and gun blasts. Will the writing of 1s and 0s work on a drive with bad sectors?

[degrub]

take the platters out and apply your favorite flame source.

[lowlifecat]

take it to a TV repair tech and run a deguasser over it a couple times.

then there is always the SLEDGEHAMMER!

[Wombat]

If only I could take it apart, scratch the hell out of it and coat something on the platters that would grow some good mold. Less troublesome than HCL acid and gun blasts. Will the writing of 1s and 0s work on a drive with bad sectors?

If you use something like <I>scrub</I> that treats the entire HD as a raw device, then you'll get every sector that the hard drive ever presents to the outside world. You can't access sectors that the HD has itself remapped, but nobody else can read those, either (not without some very custom mods to the HD's electronics, and a ton of knowledge about the HD firmware).

[Gurm]

Honestly, do you really need our help with this?

BIG...

FVCKING...

HAMMER.