Originally Posted by
BRASSCATCHER
Maybe a stupid question but want to make sure what I am doing is ok. I hit the hd with a ballpein cracking the alum case and breaking part of the platter. Then I take a chunk of the platter and throw in my alum bucket and then turn in the hd to my buyer. I do this so I am not losing too much weight from the hd. By doing this am I doing enough to ensure that the platter is made unreadable because of the missing piece? I don't get a large volume of hd's when I get towers and servers so this is the quickest way for me to ensure that the hd's are unreadable.
There's NO stupid questions, those are just the easiest ones to answer ; ) In light of what's been said on this thread alone, I believe you should be relatively worry free. I've also read in indepth studies that using the hammer was more than enough. I have been through a LOT of computers, and drives over the last ten or 12 years, including ones from FBI, Homeland Security, Dept Commerce, Census etc, and never lost a moments sleep worrying about their data being retrieved or "stolen". The horror stories are most likely related to gross negligence on the part of the "victim" (or maybe just plain ignorance). I've have a NASA hard drive nearly ten years (it snuck past them inside a large unit, I didn't know it was a HD either until beginning to dismantle it), and this thing weighs 35 pounds! I've advertised it on both
Ebay and Craigslist numerous times, but the shipping alone was prohibitive(if anyone had wanted data, and won't pay shipping, how will they spend thousands to retrieve it). Ohwelll! I almost believe for someone to connect with someone's important data, they'd need to stalk the original owner until they disposed of their computer, then wait until you removed it from their storage, then stalk you until you disposed of the HD, then stalk your buyer until, ohboy!! Why didn't they just follow the person to the ATM in the first place, and grab the receipt he tossed on the sidewalk as he was walking away??
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