A shooter's solvent for a minor problem

[Jim]

Janet told me recently that she had a word processor tower that needed to be thrown out. She was concerned, however, that someone might get hold of it and be able to retrieve critical personal information from the hard drive. "No problem" says I. "How ya' gonna do that?" Says I "Trust me, when I'm done, nobody will get anything out of it."

Tower, meet Winchester model '94 "Big Bore", .375 Winchester.

Nighty night! :bigsmyl2:

71338

[Wayne Smith]

Make sure you hit the hard drive!

[blackthorn]

After you shoot it---cook it over one of them Coon huntin fires!

[linotype]

Wayne is right. All the data is stored on the hard drive. Pop the flat black box with the cables on it. It has a plate that is motor spun with the info stored on it. Ruin the plate inside with a hole of two, and it would be able to be spun up again to get data off it.

[repawn]

I destroy all my old hard drives this way.
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/05/23/abupe3y8.jpg

[Case Stuffer]

When I am ready to replace a computer I pull the HArd Drive(s) and store them in a secure location. I have USB cables / adapters andextenal power supplies which lets me retrive files from them sometimes months later when I find that I failed to make a backup of something.

[Swamp Man]

I was thinking about this the other day my wife asked me about trashing her old computer. I told her I didn't want her to put it in the trash or hand it over to recycler due to important data that may be on it. I got to thinking maybe a nice long bath in sulfuric acid may do the trick. Anyone have an idea if sulfuric acid will eat the hard drive?

[runfiverun]

I bet a hammer will do just fine.

[ph4570]

I erase my old hard drives by hanging them at 100 yds and popping away with the Browning 45-70.

[Trey45]

I bet a hammer will do just fine.

And maybe on the casthammers.com forum they do it that way......

[starmac]

BINGO. I used to have a cast hammer.

[454PB]

Boolits work and are more fun.....but there is a free program called "Eraser" that also does the job.

[Swamp Man]

Boolits work and are more fun.....but there is a free program called "Eraser" that also does the job.
I have a eraser on my Mac computers but my wife's old Dell don't. I guess I could get out the old rarely used 30/06 and have a bit of fun.

[dtknowles]

I guess I am strange, I don't see any fun in shooting up appliances. It might be the because of the mess of microwaves, refrigerators, TV's etc. that were shot and left at a place I used to shoot. Like one other poster, I have a few harddrives I pulled from old computers and many power supplies. I am past messing with computers, at least no more than required.

I prefer targets that help determine ammo performance or hone my shooting skills. Safe guarding my data other ways.

Tim

[Bo1]

Nice shootin Jim...

A sure fired way to destroy the data on a hard drive is an electro magnet.
We destroy hundreds of them a year hear, and have to make sure that no medical data can be retrieved.

Bo

[wch]

An electric drill will do the job- two holes is good.

[gbrown]

I use a 12 lb sledge for my hard drives, but reading all the above, I think I will take the next one to the range. Spray paint it flourescent orange and put a black dot in the middle. 100 yd target for a 30/30 or .357 Herrett--sounds like some fun to me. Hang it from the bottom of a target stand with fish line--the spinning/wind effect will make it a little more challenging. Hope I hit it! LOL

[historicfirearms]

I secretly can't wait for an appliance to die in our house. The last victim was a microwave that had cooked its last potatoe. I put in one of those exploding targets and hit it with a 06 boolit. Took me the better part of an hour picking up microwave bits from the field, but it was worth it!

[Rusty W]

There's a magnet inside the hard drive. Not very big but about as strong as 3 day old fish. It takes a little work to get too but if you need/want a good strong small magnet its worth the work. It's in the bottom left corner of the 2nd pic.
http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj51/RWoolever/HD%20MAG/130523_0001_zpsdc55e5f7.jpg (http://s269.photobucket.com/user/RWoolever/media/HD%20MAG/130523_0001_zpsdc55e5f7.jpg.html)
http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj51/RWoolever/HD%20MAG/130523_0000_zps54c8fb9f.jpg (http://s269.photobucket.com/user/RWoolever/media/HD%20MAG/130523_0000_zps54c8fb9f.jpg.html)

[uscra112]

Yeah, just kill the hard drive. The motherboards can be sold as scrap. Apparently there's enough gold in them to make them worth something.

[Frank46]

I'm with Rusty. I usually take out the hard drives and destroy the disc and scrounge the magnets. Pretty strong magnets cannot get them off the backing plate. Frank

[SciFiJim]

Also, any cooling fans make great air movers in smokers. They are five volt, but six won't kill it for a good while. If you are going to toss it anyway, it is definitely usable.

[Smitty's Retired]

Depending on the prices in your area, you might want to be hanging onto the RAM memory cards and mother boards, along with scrapping out the hard drives. About a month ago between a couple of old laptops that had gone caput, and three old desktops, I disassembled them for scrap.I also had three other old hard drives that had gone bad over the years.

The Hard drives housing is made of aluminium, along with the disk inside.
Usually you have a couple of heat sinks, one for the CPU and usually one on the video / graphics card, these are also made of aluminium.
The motherboard, the memory sticks, the circuit cards in the hard drive, CD / DVD drive, and on the graphics card and the older modem cards have a value.

I know the market fluctuates. But two months ago with the scrap from three desktops, two laptops, along with the parts from three other hard drives and a few extra old DDS Ram memory cards, it fetched $67 and change. I usually check with all my relatives and friends to see if they have any old ones that have gone Tango Uniform. Might just help support your hobby a little.

Just my .02 cents worth thats not worth a nickel.

[Springfield]

I take mine apart and use the discs as mirrors for auto repair work for looking into places I can't see otherwise.

[chickenstripe]

Unfortunately, there wasn't one drive shown that has been destroyed to the point you can't get info from it. Just because you can't spin it, doesn't mean you can't get the data off of it.

I have a colleague in the banking data industry......

His job at one time was to verify their disc destruction technique. The settled on the following, and even then he said it wasn't 100%: run them through a DoD wipe, remove the hard drive discs from the hard drives, run them through a shredder, and then incinerate them.

He stated it to me this way:
The ability to obtain the info, is directly related to the importance of the info, and the amount of time and resources at your disposal.

I think of this conversation every time I see a "destroyed" hard drive.

[MtGun44]

At work, with sensitive government data, they have a big shredder that will
literally eat a hard drive, spitting out 1/8" sized chips, after having gone
through several random writes and master erase cycles. Not going to read
those files.

Bill

[rhadamanthos12]

At work, with sensitive government data, they have a big shredder that will
literally eat a hard drive, spitting out 1/8" sized chips, after having gone
through several random writes and master erase cycles. Not going to read
those files.


Bill

For ones we were going to re use we did the longest format you could do, and did it close to 10 times. After that they were considered clean. It takes a few passes to get rid of all the data on the platters, I would make sure that the platters are completely destroyed if you are trying to get rid of them.

[repawn]

For ones we were going to re use we did the longest format you could do, and did it close to 10 times. After that they were considered clean. It takes a few passes to get rid of all the data on the platters, I would make sure that the platters are completely destroyed if you are trying to get rid of them.

At work I use Darik's boot & nuke: re-writes data multiple times to every sector - easy to use and free. http://www.dban.org/

[bhop]

Tannerite ftw

[randyrat]

I scrap everything I can and save the hard drive for future reference..I tell my kids over and over "never type or put anything on a computer that you don't want the whole world to see"

[Silver Eagle]

The rare earth type magnets are incredibly strong and relatively easily removed. Same goes for the disk platters. Generally takes small Torx bits or phillips to get at them. The magnets are great for a multitude of uses. They are rather fragile, do don't let them smack together or they may break or shatter. The platters actually have the data. Have seen people use them for mirrors or wind chimes. Would also make nice hanging targets.
As for the rest of the old computer, a majority of the parts are reusable (if a bit outdated). The hard drive can possibly be added into a new machine and used for a data drive. They also sell enclosures to turn them into an external USB drive. Same goes for CD or DVD drives. Memory might go to upgrade another machine (if compatible). Other internals are also reusable such as fans (which wear out after a few years). BTW the fans are 12 Volt, NOT 5 Volt. The power supply might be reusable if compatible (wattage, physical size and connectors).
After being in the IT (computer) industry for 20+ years I have accumulated a lot of used parts. Kind of irks me to see someone destroy a usable machine just because they did not know how to get the data off. Also because of not knowing how to do basic maintenance to keep the machine running (virus prevention, OS updates and general cleanup issues to name a few).

[winelover]

I bet a hammer will do just fine.

I've done it both ways. Boolet is much less effort.

Winelover

[gofastman]

I scrap everything I can and save the hard drive for future reference..I tell my kids over and over "never type or put anything on a computer that you don't want the whole world to see"
Wise man!
you would be amazed at what data recovery companies can retrieve!
just because you delete or uninstall something doesn't mean its gone

[oldgeezershooter]

71657

[Mal Paso]

Wise man!
you would be amazed at what data recovery companies can retrieve!
just because you delete or uninstall something doesn't mean its gone

You would be amazed how much data recovery costs. A boolit is going to cause Thousands of dollars more damage to a hard drive than My Data is worth.

I really need to get some Darker Secrets! :-D

[popper]

repawn - Chinese product meets US ingenuity. Problem solved.

[beagle]

They make great bench coolers for hot moulds as well./beagle


Also, any cooling fans make great air movers in smokers. They are five volt, but six won't kill it for a good while. If you are going to toss it anyway, it is definitely usable.