Posted on 02/26/2009 9:00:20 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
Last Friday morning when I got to the office, I found that my computer had the infamous Microsoft Blue Screen of Death. I tried rebooting, but the SCSI card got no response from my boot drive. This wasn't a huge problem, because I had already intended to upgrade my system drive and already had my data partitions copied to the new drive. After a little work I was able to restore a recent enough backup of my system drive to my new system drive and get the computer runing again.
My problem now is how do I destroy the data that still exists on the hard drive platters so they can't be read and recovered by anyone else even someone with access to a clean room who could fix the drive well enough to read any data that still exists on them. I've considered using my bulk eraser to erase the data that still exists and then using an electric drill to put holes in the platters.
Claim you have a genuine PDF file of Obama's REAL birth Certificate on the Hard Drive!
It will disappear very fast!
Pry the hard drive open and pour about 5 ounces of skunk urine into it. Make it so disgusting that NObody would want to fool with it unless they had a hazmat suit.
How you get the skunk urine is up to you, but keep us informed. ;)
Try cooling it down in the freezer, then install it and MOVE THOSE FILES FAST!
We have a winner at post #40.
You might be able to hook it up to a pc that already has a bootable hard drive. They you can use windows to copy and paste the files to the working hard drive.
Best way I know involves a DeLorean...
I have no idea what the sensitivity of the information stored on this warrants this level of concern by you, but as long as you don’t want to resell or reuse the HD, you can do just about anything you want to destroy the data permanently. Magnets, microwaves, impact maintenance, chemicals, fire.... the world is your oyster.
Personally, I like to use a hammer and nailset to poke a hole through the HD casing and break the platter without sending metal and plastic shards all over the room.
But how are you going to get the 1.21 Gigawatts?
Yes, that’s exactly what it was doing, so my husband removed it and replaced it with a new hard drive (internal)...a few years ago something similar happened to my computer, and there was a little hole-in-the-wall repair shop down the street. They had me bring a new external hard drive and they transferred all the documents, pictures, videos, etc. from the broken one to the new hard drive. Went to see if they could fix this current drive the same way, but they seem to have moved or gone out of business. :-( I’m so not a happy camper about this! :-(
I tried to transfer the info using that MS Files Transfer Wizard thing, but apparently I didn’t save the files correctly to my external hard drive because I can’t open any of the files now. (a usmt2 folder full of 56GB of .dat files)
Wrap it up in some garbage, stick that in an empty food product carton, put that in the center of the kitchen trash bag, put the trash bag in the center of the other trash in the dumpster, and send it to the land fill.
That is one MIGHTY FINE beeber you have there. You must be proud.
My favorite form of total destruction is a coal fire. 20 minutes and it is nothing but a clinker... Stoker or lump coal, either will do... Find someplace burning coal and toss them in.
...and there you were...actually hoping to get a serious response...that’ll teach ya...;)
Oh, this happened several months ago. We have the hard drive wrapped up in the special foil type wrapping envelope the new hard drive came in (prevents static or something?) to protect it.
Install it in an external enclosure, reformat, and use it as extra external storage.
That’s if it only had a bad MBR and you already are using a replacement drive.
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