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I just replaced my laptop's HDD that just died and now I need to know what do I do with the dead drive? Do I throw it out, bust it with my baseball bat, run over it with my car, throw it in a river? What do I do? |
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Well, considering hard drives contain sensitive information even after they have died, I suggest you take the hard drive and drill through the platters. This will remove all traces of data. You can recycle the drive as well. If you want, get a set of TORX screwdrivers and open it up! It has magnets you can remove! If you take the route of opening it, take out the platters as well and scratch them up. This will also make the data unreadable. |
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You cannot just throw the drive away when you are done with it. Assuming you are in the US, there are laws that prohibit most electronics from being pitched into the dump. The main reason is because many parts in the computer have either mercury, lead, or both. The hard drive usually doesn't contain these materials but the law still applies to them. Best Buy has a recycling program and I believe they give you a few bucks of in store credit or you can find a metal recycler and get a few more dollars from it. If you can get the platters out of the drives, you will be in better shape. They are coated in a very precious metal and will net you a little more. If you want to abuse the drive before hand, that would be fine... it will keep people from getting a hold of any sensitive data that may be on the drive. |
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If you want to take a a peak inside and see how it works you can do it that way as well. I did it once for a client who thought that the hard drive was a mysterious thing to have inside the computer itself. I think it was an old 40 gig hard drive that finally gave up on him. |
