How do you physically remove an old computer's hard drive? And is that enough to prevent identity theft?

Question

I just want to dispose of the few I have at my community's electronics drop off day and prefer not to have to do too much work. I have been told to just get the hard drive out and smash it, but where is it an how small must I smash it?

Answer 1

software-based "shredders" such Norton WipeInfo can delete and overwrite files several times to ensure that they cannot be read again thus making a computer easy to sale with a working hard drive

Answer 2

Just open the computer panel. Inside, there are hard drive, mother board, floppy drive, CD drive and few cards. So you can read for hard drive and take it out.

From your question, it is not clear whether you want to smash hard drive or computer. However you can decide about identity of hard drive. You can take it out and keep it safe. It can be used with other computer.

All information stored in hard drive. If that is kept in safe custody, identity theft can be protected.

Rest go ahead. Take out hard drive.

Answer 3

Yes, it is usually a box-like unit located at the front of the computer, inside. It is mounted with a ATA and power cable attached.

What you should do is go to Radio Shack, get one of those degausing rings for your television, and use that to demagnatise the HD. That's how the govt wipes their drives. I'd prolly remove the platters as well within the drive.

Keep the magnets that are within the drive - they're pretty hardcore strong.

Answer 4

The best way to do what you are asking is this:
remove the drive (open cover of CPU, 4-6 screws hold it in case). The actual "data" portion of the drive is like a CD. If you want the contents unreadable, that's what you have to destroy (melting or scratching would probably work nicely).

The easier option would be to hook the drives up to another computer as a slave and do 2-3 "low-level" formats of the drive.

Answer 5

You open your computer case, unscrew the drive, and slip it out. It's probably regular IDE ATA, so it will have a really flat wide wire plugged into it.

If you want to make sure data can never be retrieved again. The safest thing to do is to unscrew and open the harddrive itself, remove the gold-coloured disks, and scratch lines all over the disks with a key.

Answer 6

There are ways to permanently wipe the hard drive once you've *completely* transferred your data to another drive.

I think it's called "Department of Defense-certified" or something. Government certified. Whatever. But whatever it is, it thoroughly scrambles your drive, and is available. Try searching at amazon.com or other sites with reviews. You'll find it.

Answer 7

The hard drive is located inside the case, usually mounted in one of the front bays. I would smash it until it is unrocognizable