Wednesday, January 28, 2009

How to dispose of, or recycle, an old hard drive?

There’s an interesting debate going on about how best to dispose of one of these.

In a letter to The Guardian’s IT section (22/1/09), Sarah Kidner (the editor of “Which” Computing) states that having your hard drive wiped clean of all your sensitive data by yourself or by a company, is not entirely reliable. She reckons that personal data such as bank details could still be retrieved from your hard drive, by someone else. So she recommends destroying it physically ~
smashing it up with a hammer.

Jack Schofield of The Guardian has said on previous occasions that you should
wrap the hard drive in an old towel and then smash it with a hammer ~ I think
he advised wearing safety goggles, to protect your eyes.

The counter-argument is presented in this article …

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/08/hard_drive_hammer_destruction/

… which makes interesting reading, as does the next one …

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/01/08/234133/smash-old-hard-drives-for-total-data-security-says.htm

So how about using your old hard drive to make an external hard
drive for your own use?


Have a look at YouTube for videos on how to do this …

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HKKcB6NUocQ

You may have to put the words "making an external hard drive" into the
search box on YouTube, and then have a look through some of the videos.


(Click on this photo to see a larger version.
Click on the little TV screen below his left arm
to get a full screen picture, while watching it "live".)


You will see on these videos how to remove a hard drive from your old PC,
and how to put it into some new casing, to make an external hard drive.
The casing and leads can be bought from shops like Maplins or from our local shop Compu-Plus Direct (lower down Mansfield Road)... and online also.


I’ve also found an excellent article in PC Mag online, which explains how to
build an external hard drive, and how to format (prepare) it before use.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1916862,00.asp

I intend building one sometime this year, using the hard drive from my old
Windows 98 machine. I’ll let you know how I get on in due course.