help me break something expensive

[i_baked_cookies]

what is a good way to mess up a laptop hard drive without using magnets or hitting it alot. by mess up i mean make it so there is no way you can read anything or write anything to it. i dont know what to delete or what. dont ask why. the hard drive is easily removable.

[Brak]

fire!!!!!

[i_baked_cookies]

okay.. let me add that i still need the harddrive to be intact. im not gonna blow it up... i just want to make it unreadable.

[Deep Sixx]

If you just wanna erase it, do a low-level format. To render it useless: EMP or strong static discharge. Bye-bye HD. Some red loc-tite on the bearing would probably work too.

sixx

[Spleen]

go into dos and do a "del *.*" and watch the fun.

[i_baked_cookies]

well what exactly will that do? im just temped to hit it alot until it doesnt turn on. thats what i did before... oh well

[Jonneh]

well what exactly will that do? im just temped to hit it alot until it doesnt turn on. thats what i did before... oh wellIn CS101 they were lecturing us about hard drives and formatting and whatever drivel and the subject turned to a company who's business it was to retreive whatever data they can from supposedly unrecoverable discs. According to my lecturer, the only drive that they could not get a single piece of recognisable data was one where the owner must have gotten pretty nonplussed and decided the best course of action would be to unload a few .45s into his case.

[Brak]

why are you doing this anyway? just put paint over the surface then, i bet you a dollar the laser cant read through a thick layer of (your choice of colored) paint

[Muzikman]

If you just open it up and expose the platters to dirt and dust it will be useless as a HD. But Jonneh is right, there are companies who can retreve data off just about any non-phusically destroyed HD. A Degausser would be your best bet. It does a good enough job that government and large corperations use em before they throw away old drives.

[BlackHalo]

If you don't care about the data, just remove the partition and don't put a new one on it...that way the drive is still ok. To re-use it just put a new partition on it, and format.

[Jet-Xino]

I reccomend this meathod : How to reformat a hard drive (http://www.the-red-army.com/videos/PC567.zip)

[thecavemankevin]

use a blow torch! just put a high temp flame to the outside case for a few seconds and then take it away. do this a couple times and you will melt the disks inside enough to make it inopperable, but not damage the outside.

[-=Squid=-]

Im not saying crap till you tell us why you wanna do it :)

[dyeguy65]

... by mess up i mean make it so there is no way you can read anything or write anything to it.... dont ask why

i think someones been looking at porn ;) :p :D

[Will Wood]

i think someones been looking at porn ;) :p :D

rofl

Yea... Hiding the evidence! We know your secret now.

:p
(is it just me or was this smilie in the top right hand of the smilies box the otehr day?)

[i_baked_cookies]

damn you all!

lol

i dont need any more suggestions... thanks guys

[jjraf]

click here and look for the one w/ laptop explosions (www.thebroken.org)

[Rob218]

How do you go about recovering info from drives that have been formatted? Always been a topic of interest.

[bornl33t]

boot-n-nuke

it formats the hard drive writes over it again with useless junk and then formats it again... about 30ish times. NO date will possibly survive that. make sure you don't need your computer for a day

[Bad_Dog]

static.... if your school has a vandigraf generator... that would work very good

put it in the washing machine :confused: every time i put my cell phone through, it ruins it..... :mad: so I'm assuming that It'd ruin your hard drive :)

[Skoad]

you can zero it to absolutely wipe EVERYTHING off it, but it'll take days depending on how big it is :)

[WickeDKlowN]

you can zero it to absolutely wipe EVERYTHING off it, but it'll take days depending on how big it is :)
Well, in theory you can still get stuff back after you zero a hdd, but nobody has been able to do it(not like the NSA would tell us even if they had...) yet. And getting stuff back after a normal format is trivial.

To just get rid of it where the drive still works, try AutoClave or DBAN. to render the drive useless but still intact you could try EMP or just open it up and scratch the platters.

[paintballer20]

Heres one more I don't think has been said, turn it on and PEE on it :D