I have a Dell laptop that was running slow several years ago before I put it away. I tried to start it up recently but it wouldn't turn on. I called Dell Support and described the problem:

The light on the power adapter lights when I plug it into the power outlet but when I plug it into the laptop, it dies and the laptop doesn't charge. He says the motherboard needs to be changed for $250. For just $500, I can get a new laptop that someone else posted in their thread here.

So I want to get rid of the laptop but I want to make sure the data in the hard drive is erased or cleaned out. How can I do this?

Thanks for the help.

Remove the hard drive and physically destroy it.

If you drive a nail through it, you'll typically shatter the platters to very small shards. You can then hear the shards when you shake it like a rattle. That's the sweet sounds of InfoSec.

Sometimes they're metal. Best you can do is bend those platters. or BIG magnets will do the trick.

One mag 45 Acp, lots of fun.

I usually drill big holes and then hammer it bent.

If there is anything you want off the hard drive you can buy adapters to access the drive externally from the dead laptop. And if the drive itself is good salvage it as a second drive for a desktop or convert it to an external drive. Depending where in the Bay Area you are Frye's Electronics or even an office supply big box store should have them in stock.

If this route is not worth the time or effort then the physical destruction route works.

You mean like with a cloth or something?

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
If you drive a nail through it, you'll typically shatter the platters to very small shards.

There are better tools for this task. I have a .22 tool, a .223 tool, and a .308 tool specifically made to fix stuff like dead hard drives, stubborn Keurig coffee makers and other recalcitrant items that refuse to work properly. Discovering what tool is the right tool for the job is part of the fun.

I usually pull the drive, disassemble it, and physically destroy the platters.

It's not hard, just a few Phillips or Torx screws.

quote:

Originally posted by g8rforester:
I usually pull the drive, disassemble it, and physically destroy the platters.

It's not hard, just a few Phillips or Torx screws.

Plus, that way you get some very intense, small magnets!

1. Google how to get to HDD for that model, it's usually pretty easy
2. Drill a couple holes in drive with a good bit
3. Toss in trash

I'd pull the RAM too, you could possibly resell or reuse that.

quote:

Originally posted by lastmanstanding:
You mean like with a cloth or something?

Yes, that's what he meant. The OP meant for you to interject politics into this thread because he knew I'd be along shortly to see it, and everyone knows how thrilled am I that you've infected it.

Most laptops, the HDD is fairly easy to remove. With an adapter you can likely hook it to a desktop and transfer the data to another HDD if you want to keep it. With it connected, once you've removed the data you can reformat it. If you want to ensure it's permanently gone, just go get a big magnet and sit it on there for a bit. Move it about a little and the data will be corrupted beyond recovery.

Use it as a wheel chock and drive over it.

I used a program called DBAN before. It would boot from a disk and overwrite a drive as many times as you wanted. Even with three passes it would take forever so I just physically destroy them now.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Use it as a wheel chock and drive over it.

Gotta try harder.

If you left the housing on most HDDs you can run them over and the platters will still be intact.

The drive might even still be useable.

Probably it's really just either a bad battery (Lithium Ion cells can be rendered unusable by discharging too far for too long) or the power adaptor.

If you don't want to re-use the hard drive it'll be sufficient to just give it a few really good whacks, hard enough to seriously deform it, with a hammer.

If you do want to save it you can hook it up to another machine with a USB<->drive adaptor kit, delete everything, and run a program called "eraser" on it (MS-Windows) or "sfill" (Linux). These run multiple passes of pseudo-random-pattern overwrites on all unused space, making recovery by even the best of technology (as might be employed by a certain three-letter-acronym government agency) exceedingly unlikely.

N.B.: Reformatting does not guarantee the data on it is rendered truly unreadable.

N.B.: The overwrite processes described above do not work for SSDs! For SSDs you have to use the ATA Secure Erase function, if the manufacturer provided one.

Toss it in the microwave...



Hehe

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Toss it in the microwave...

Hehe

Actually, put it on an outdoor gas grill for awhile. Guaran-damn-tee you no one is going to get ANY data of out EVER!

Interesting. Never thought of that. Would it def damage metal platters?