Technical > Computer Hardware Help > [hard drive] Won't initialize. CRC error

[hard drive] Won't initialize. CRC error

Soak in boiling salt water? lol. Where did you come up with that?

If you're disassembling it anyway, just destroy the disk.

When you're done, will it be dissembled?

reply to signmeuptoo
If you can't access the drive and are concerned about the data, you have a couple options.

Choose your weapon & multilate the drive & the platters or keep the drive in your possession forever.

I have gone so far as to open the drive, remove the platters , destroy them individually, and throw them away in separate trash cans over the course of several weeks. Unless someone is actively looking for your information, you will be fine. Depends how concerned you are about the contents. If you are concerned about someone casually seeing the drive laying in the dump and trying to hook it up, just destroy the connectors. If you are concerned about someone going forensic on it, mutilate the platters.

Great stress relieving exercise too.

reply to signmeuptoo
Mainly just don't want identity theft and because I had a few wares on it. I ordered the screw drivers off of ebay. Which sizes of drivers do they use to disassemble? It's a WD drive...

Look at the drive... it is likely a torx head...

reply to signmeuptoo
»datakillers.com/home/corporate-d···gaussing
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Heh. I'll take it apart and pull the platters and stick em in the microwave!

Simple Answer: A Drill Press and a 3/8" cobalt metal cutting bit.

Drill 4-5 holes straight down through the cover & platters, and then just toss it in the Metal Scrap bin... NO amount of data recovery is possible with that type of damage.

-Tursiops_G.
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If You're Unsure, "RTFM"... If You're SURE, "RTFM" Anyway.

reply to signmeuptoo
You don't need to do anything extravagant. Just take a hammer and bash the top in about 1/2 inch in one or two places. Looking down at the main label, aim an inch out from the center of the platters and scream "hulk smash".

A drill works too but I've seen enough broken bits that it seems unnecessarily expensive. I've yet to break a hammer.
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reply to signmeuptoo
the platters - could - be installed into another like drive & potentially read if they are not destroyed.

Obviously we are talking more than the casual, "Oh, look a hard drive. I wonder what's on it" type of situation but if we are being thorough, lets be thorough.

I forgot to mention in my prior post, I also remove all identification from the drive. Doing so destroys the chances of someone swapping parts out to make it work in the off chance there is data to be read. Hard drives are picky about compatibility & everything being identical. That works in our favor when we are attempting to keep data away from others.

reply to signmeuptoo
Well I thought you could not degauss an hdd but I guess I am wrong.

Everything else so far will *not* destroy the hdds data...

All a drill hole will do is destroy the data on that part of the hdd...

Microwave will not destroy it either...

I dent will not destroy it...

So much bad info here shesh.

Anything short of complete destruction of the platters does NOT destroy the data degaussing I guess will work from looking around however you can't do it with out paying for a machine (a magnet will NOT do it)

matt, can't they use a scanning electron micorscope to read the data, or something?

I don't know what they did at the labs, but they had special disposal teams for drives IIRC.

Sad the drive died, I took it apart and one of the chips was overheating.
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HDD is all magnetic, I do not know how a scanning electron microscope would read it but I aint really up with that kinda tech (and I'm tired =p )

»www.wimp.com/driveengineered/

All I know is if someone REALLY wants your data... a drill does nothing to destroy it ALL. I think that is a pretty cool demo of a HDD and how it works/is made.

Point is... all about magnetism... a drill does not change that. I mean sure, me stealing your hard drive with a few holes... ya I aint gona get anything off it... but the right person could... all depends on how paranoid you want to be.

reply to signmeuptoo
Throw that broken hard drive into both Kīlauea & Mauna Loa volcano's on the Big Island of Hawaii.

reply to signmeuptoo
Run the Hard Drive plate in the microwave for a minutes.

reply to signmeuptoo

reply to signmeuptoo
Just hook it up to 1.21 gigawatts of power off the DeLorean time machine. I'm sure that Doc Emmett L. Brown won't have a problem with you doing that.

reply to signmeuptoo
I wonder what the Curie point would be on HDD platter materials...

reply to signmeuptoo
What do we do with SSDs to erase them if they fail?