Anywhere in Dublin to get Hard Drives Shredded?

Slydice

Hello

I'm doing a bit of spring cleaning and I've a few old hard drives lying about which I want to get rid of. I've moved all the data to newer hard drives.

I want to get the drives shredded because I have stored private information like personal stuff, work details, billing information etc on them in the past.

Is there anywhere around Dublin that I can bring these out to throw into a shredding machine?

beauf

Doesn't drilling a few holes achieve the same thing?

CianRyan

Hammer?

peckerhead

Nail. Head.

MiamiMice

Rehab recycle shred the bejaysus out of them. Might be more aimed at corporate, bulk volume, customers though..

Software options exist e.g. DBAN

waraf

In many hard drives the disks are made of a glass substrate which is then coated with several extremely thin layers of metal. A few decent swings of a hammer will shatter the glass disks inside rendering the disks unreadable and irreparable.

Francie Barrett

MiamiMice wrote: »

Rehab recycle shred the bejaysus out of them. Might be more aimed at corporate, bulk volume, customers though..

Software options exist e.g. DBAN

I suspect Rehab or whoever would want to charge you money.

Use DBAN to wipe the data through software, then drill a few holes through the drive and give it a few bashes of the hammer. If you can hear broken shards rattling around the inside that is almost certainly enough.

Jake Rugby Walrus666

what make of hard disk drive have you got?

i have a very old maxtor ata hard disk sitting near me here. it has six t8 (torx) screws in the top of it. Taking these off would give you access to the platters. Take them out and smash them with a hammer.

ten minutes work. no cost.

PropJoe10

Just drive a 6 inch nail through the disk platter. Problem solved.

Slydice

I've 8 x 3.5 inch HDDs and 1 x 2.5 inch HDD.

The place I work had a van turn up with a shredder a month or two ago. Yer man shredded the drives and took away the shredded bits. I was hoping I'd be able to get a service like that around the city.

I'll see if the guy in IT who organised it has yer mans details, maybe he lets regular people shredd their drives. I hope it's not a case of having to have a bulk order.

PropJoe10

Would it not be a lot cheaper to go John Rambo on your 9 drives, and save yourself some money in the process?

Tokyo

Unless you have Edward Snowden's greatest hits on the drives, a wallop of a good lumphammer, or drilling a few holes through each drive will render the data unrecoverable.

Mr. G

PropJoe10 wrote: »

Would it not be a lot cheaper to go John Rambo on your 9 drives, and save yourself some money in the process?

And have fun too

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Stick it in the microwave

enniscorthy

Slydice wrote: »

Hello

I have stored private information like personal stuff, work details, billing information etc on them in the past.

i'll take them off you mate hehe

Kristopherus

Hold the disks near a sound speaker. The magnet in the speaker will sterilise the disks.

UCDVet

Not a real answer but....

You can get software tools that will write random bits all over the hard-drive. I know CSI-Miami has taught us different, but there isn't any way for someone to recover the data.

Here is a really good write-up on what can actually be done:
http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html

Before you spend money or physically destroy them - you might want to consider writing junk data, formatting them, and finding someone (like a niece or nephew) who would get some use out of them.

Otherwise - you really can just take a hammer to them.

If you are super paranoid, you can write junk data over all of it first - then smash it with hammer. But I wouldn't spend money on a professional service. It's just overkill.

coylemj

HDDs have an air hole inside of which is a hydrophobic membrane, this allows air to flow in and out to equalize the pressure inside and outside which protects the case in the event that you bring your laptop to the top of Mont Blanc or the shores of the Dead Sea. It also prevents dust and water molecules getting in. Somewhere in the top of the disk case there is a tiny pinhole with some kind of warning beside it, it may be a circular paper disc. If you shove a pin into it, it will break a hole in the membrane and if anyone ever installs the disk in a PC and switches it on, dust will quickly get in and cause a head crash. On my old laptop HDD (Seagate 320B), it's a hole in the metal near the edge and there's a warning beside it 'Please do not cover breather hole'.

For the effort involved and the minuscule potential to get your hands on anything useful, why would anyone take a HDD home from a landfill or recycling centre and try it in a PC? Your bank account details are printed on any cheques you write and any passwords stored on the HDD will probably be years out of date, most of them are probably stored encrypted in the browser cache anyway and are not retrievable.

But if you insist...... fill the disk with loads of crap (e.g. make multiple copes of your 'Pictures' folder), then delete all the files and do a defrag. And get a pliers and bend the crap out of the pins in the interface socket.

goingitalone

as the the lads said hammer or a drill no point wasting money

beauf

Wiping a drive and overwriting it with other data is as secure as most people will ever need.

But (I assume) it can't be the drive you're booting from. As you need to overwrite any OS files and hidden partitions.

So if you don't know how to do that drilling a hole makes sure of it.

komodosp

Jaysus a hard drive dropped from my couch and I was quoted between .€100 and €300 to retrieve the data. Is your data so important and sensitive that you'd think someone would go through the trouble?

White Heart Loon

komodosp wrote: »

Jaysus a hard drive dropped from my couch and I was quoted between .€100 and €300 to retrieve the data. Is your data so important and sensitive that you'd think someone would go through the trouble?

Depends on the data, I would hope that companies go to this sort of trouble with any sensitive personal information

FWIW it most likely costs the hard drive recovery company nothing to retrieve your info, 100% profit from the knowledge of knowing how to do it

sawdoubters

hammer,first break the plastic board then hit the case

Duggy747

Hammer and a fat chisel.

So satisfying

Soundman

Fill a bucket with Coca-Cola. Put drives in. Leave for a week.
Let them dry out.
Drill a few holes through them.
Get a hammer and relieve any stress by smashing the bejaysus out of them.
Throw them into random bins around the city.

With the money you have saved on not going to a professional shredder, who won't do as good a job, buy yourself something nice.

KAGY

A clip from Bang Goes the Theory,
IIRC they drove over a drive, toasted another etc, gas axed a third etc.

light and fluffy pop-science, but apt.

Tokyo

KAGY wrote: »

A clip from Bang Goes the Theory,
IIRC they drove over a drive, toasted another etc, gas axed a third etc.

To be fair, the three unrecoverable ones, they attacked the drives themselves. The other three, they popped one in the toaster but didn't physically touch the drive, drove over the computer case with a tractor, and attacked the case with a hammer but didn't touch the drives themselves. Not exactly a fair comparison....

rolliepoley

Go for a walk down to the bull wall and see which one you can through farthest

wil

rolliepoley wrote: »

Go for a walk down to the bull wall and see which one you can through farthest

and maybe get done for littering. Plus the drive will likely be undamaged

mike_ie wrote: »

To be fair, the three unrecoverable ones, they attacked the drives themselves. The other three, they popped one in the toaster but didn't physically touch the drive, drove over the computer case with a tractor, and attacked the case with a hammer but didn't touch the drives themselves. Not exactly a fair comparison....

Exactly - comparing 3 relatively undamaged to 3 obliterated ones.
If you want to be 100% sure, dismantle the drive, remove the platters and destroy the platters.
TBH not sure why anyone would waste time trying to recover a damaged drive unless they were being paid to do it.

KAGY

wil wrote: »

and maybe get done for littering. Plus the drive will likely be undamaged


Exactly - comparing 3 relatively undamaged to 3 obliterated ones.
If you want to be 100% sure, dismantle the drive, remove the platters and destroy the platters.
TBH not sure why anyone would waste time trying to recover a damaged drive unless they were being paid to do it.

but it is an indication of the fun to be had. of course you could always get creative

rolliepoley

wil wrote: »

and maybe get done for littering. Plus the drive will likely be undamaged

I was kidding, you did'nt think the op was actually going to take my advice.did you.?