Wiping a hard drive

[ohheckyeah]

I need some advice please. I had a hard drive failure in a computer under warranty. The hard drive was replaced but they want me to send them the hard drive that failed.

How can I wipe the hard drive that failed? It's already been removed from the computer so I have no idea how to wipe it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[ChromeFoundry]

1. do you have access

to a large speaker with a big magnet underneath?
Usually a decent wattage 6"x9" car speaker will have a fairly large magnet. Roll the hard drive around on that thing for a few minutes. If the controller or spindle motor are shot, that's about the best you can do.

[theoldman]

2. Wiping clean a hard drive

If it is a desk top computer there should be room for a second hard drive. I think it is called a slave. Use the failed hard drive as the slave and reformate it. Another option is to check if someone has an external hard drive.

[ohheckyeah]

3. I have an external hard drive.

How does that help?

I really don't want to try putting it back into the computer it was removed from and screw that computer up.

I have a really old computer - might it fit in that? Can you wipe it from MS Dos?


Thanks for the replies.

[ohheckyeah]

6. Well, I don't really have any

speakers that are very large and it just seems a bit iffy to me.

[TheMadMonk]

5. Almost certainly not. DOS can't handle modern large drives.

Take it to a TV repairer (someone who's been in the business a good few years) and ask him to hit it with a degaussing wand.

Most modern speakers are magnetically shielded, so CF's suggestion is unlikely to work.

[ChromeFoundry]

10. I mentioned using automotive speakers...

because no automotive speakers are magnetically shielded unless the are in an enclosure. A 6x9 will have the largest magnet for a common speaker before getting into the woofers or subwoofer class.

Hold a screwdriver next to the speaker... if it is attracted to the magnet... it is not shielded.

I like the degausser idea at a TV repair shop. Another idea is taking the drive to a local machine shop. Most every Tool and Die or General Machine shop will have a tool demagnetizer for their drills.

[ohheckyeah]

14. Okay - I'll try the speaker thing and check with a local tv repair shop.

I'm trying to remember what's on that hard drive as much of my stuff was moved to an external and/or my laptop but I know there is a password safe on it.

Frankly - I've been reinstalling software, trying to get my work done, etc. etc. and I'm weary from the whole thing.

I'll probably also call a local PC shop in town and see if they can tell me anything. If they could access any of the files for me that would be good. I have a couple of things that I know I backed up missing - I'm sure its somewhere in the external but I can't find it.

[CountAllVotes]

18. MSDOS

I remember the command to wipe it clean if you can get into MSDOS.

You need to get to c://
then type in format c: /u


That will do it.

Best of luck.

[grok]

8. old tv/crt degausser should do the trick

In the old days of tvs with tubes , the display would sometimes display funny colors thats because they would occasionally get magnetized in certain parts of the screen. a degausser was used to DE-magnetize the entire crt and the problem would go away.

Ask a local ancient tv repair shop. bet they might get a kick out of and do it for free. 10 seconds should be enough if you put it right on top of the degausser.

[RC]

9. Depends -

First off is there actually anything sensitive on it? Passwords and credit card/bank info, or a porn collection? The manufacture doesn't care and only wants the drive back to determine why it failed. (At one time Gateway had a big problem with one of their software drivers. The exact same hard drive supplied in another brand computer worked fine.)
The manufacture not only has a reputation to maintain but legal obligations to uphold and is unlikely to do anything with any data on the drive. They don't like the possibility of being sued. Damages the reputation and cuts into sales to corporations and governments

TV Degaussing coils are not likely to work, they not strong enough. Tape erasers, maybe. But how can you know if it works if the drive is toast in the first place?
You would need something like this.



Where I worked, when we replaced a hard drive, the old drive was returned to the manufacture and we didn't care what was on it. Not even from the bosses computer. Quite often we couldn't do much about that anyway.
But when we got rid of old computers, we always wiped the drive with DBAN, a multi hour process. Formatting won't work. The information is still there and can be recovered.

[ohheckyeah]

11. Well, if they can access files

they would find keys to some software and a password safe that if someone wanted to break the password to bad enough I suppose they could. I guess I can just change all of my account passwords.

Of course, they made it plain they accept no responsibility for personal information left on the hard drive.

I'm going to talk to them today about it and see what they will charge me to keep the old hard drive. Probably too much.

No porn.

[gvstn]

12. If your old computer boots from CD

Then you can download the bootable CD version of partition wizard (last link on the page so scroll down) http://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

Then burn that to a blank CD using imgburn's "Write IMAGE File to Disc". Must use the Image file option. http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=61

Then boot the old computer from the CD and use the Disk Wipe function to erase the data. Writing zeros to the drive is plenty unless they have a real criminal working for them. http://www.partitionwizard.com/help/wipe-disk.html

[ohheckyeah]

13. The hard drive has been removed

from the computer.

[gvstn]

20. I meant putting the HD in the very old computer

You can remove the HD from the very old computer and replace it with the HD to be erased. Then boot from CD and wipe the drive. The CD will contain its own OS. This just lets you use a more modern interface than DOS which may have trouble working on a larger HD.

But as others have pointed out, in reality there is little chance anyone is going to go through your old HD in that type of factory situation.

[ohheckyeah]

21. Gotcha.....

I don't think I have a CD for the OS on the very old computer but I'll check. I think it has Windows 95 on it.

[gvstn]

23. No

You would download the bootable partition wizard CD.
Put that in the old computer with the HD to be erased installed, and boot from the CD. It will load PW program and then you can wipe the HD.

Edit: Sorry, I just read your original post again. Your new computer is still under warranty so relatively new and the old computer had win95 on it. The hard drives would be different interfaces so the new HD cannot be attached to the old computer. Please disregard the whole idea.

Edit again: unless you want to temporarily remove the new HD from the computer, put the old one back and boot from the CD to wipe the old HD in the new computer. Sounds like you didn't do the HD replacement so you may not be comfortable with this.

[BlueJazz]

15. As a Tech, I've sent back hundreds of shot hard-drives for replacement. Never had any problems.

Nobody is going to go to that much trouble, trying to read your drive, at the plant.

[ohheckyeah]

16. Thank you....

that helps to relieve my mind. I've been under a lot of stress trying to keep up with my work load because that computer was my workhorse and some peace of mind is welcomed.

[sir pball]

17. A magnet will *destroy* it

Any magnetic field strong enough to scramble the data on the platters (which takes a LOT of magnetism) is also going to wipe the guidance tracks that the read/write heads use, effectively destroying the drive.

If you're worried about it, put it into an external enclosure or back in the second bay of your computer, boot a live linux distro, and dd if=/dev/random of=<hard drive>. Overwrites the entire thing with random data, needs a low-level format to even be usable let alone readable.

[hobbit709]

19. If it's failed, there's no easy way to wipe it.

How did it fail? Is it totally dead where even the BIOS won't recognize it? The bottom line is if it's under warranty you need to send it in to get it replaced. If you don't send it in-no warranty replacement. Sure, you can physically destroy the drive but if you do that and send it in, the warranty would be void.
If it's totally failed, you're not going to be able to access it to wipe it in the first place.

[ohheckyeah]

22. I appreciate all the good suggestions and replies.

I called a local computer shop and they said they have a huge magnet they can swipe it with and will do it for free.

I guess that's as good as it gets.

Thanks again, everyone.