Special software programs can permanently erase your hard drive. If you use these programs, there's little chance you'll be able to recover your erased data. That's good news: No one else can use data recovery software to recover your erased files.
How to Securely Erase a Hard Drive. The best way to make sure an old-fashioned mechanical hard drive is securely erased is to overwrite it with dummy data multiple times. There's a popular freeware app called DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) that writes to all the sectors using secure sanitization methods.
Destroy Hard Drive by Drive Destruction Software. How to destroy a hard drive without physical damage? EaseUS BitWiper can help you secure erase data without hammer and screwdriver, which provide three functions to wipe disk, wipe partition, and shred files. It is free to wipe a hard drive.
In theory, a magnet could be used to corrupt data on a hard drive. However, your average magnet, or even a relatively strong one, would not be strong enough to have any effect on a hard drive. You would need to bring an extremely powerful magnet into contact with the magnetic platters of a hard drive.
Degaussing is simply a demagnetizing process to erase a hard drive or tape. Degaussers contain a controlled magnetic field that is measured in units of gauss or oersteds (Oe).
What is Degaussing? Degaussing is a method of permanently erasing data from working and non-working hard drives, tape, and floppy disks. Degaussing completely sanitizes the media of data in seconds by delivering a powerful magnetic pulse that instantly destroys all magnetic domains on the disk platters.
Degaussing—applying a very strong magnet—has been an accepted method for erasing data off of magnetic media like spinning hard drives for decades. But it doesn't work on SSDs. SSDs don't store data magnetically, so applying a strong magnetic field won't do anything.
Degaussing a hard drive uses powerful magnetic forces to make the disc plates of the hard drive inoperable so that the data is completely destroyed. Shredding a hard drive involves tearing up the hard drive into smaller bits and pieces so that it can never be used again.
You should know that the file system will have fragmented the larger files into small pieces of data that are stored in various places on the platters. While the files on one platter will be fine, those files stored on the scratched disk may not be.
A degaussing wand is a hand held device for erasing hard disc platters. The platter (disk) must be removed from the hard drive and the wand is then passed over it for approximately a minute to achieve a good erasure.
Here's an idea: You can destroy the platter by drilling holes into it. You can do this using a hand drill, a nail gun, or a hammer. Drilling is a method you should carefully consider because some platters are glass. You could send bits of glass (or metal) flying everywhere.
Disposing hard drives simply through the trash isn't a good idea. Not only are you impacting the environment in a negative way by contributing to landfill waste, but you could also be exposing yourself to major data breaches! Fortunately, there is a simple solution: electronics recycling.
It's true that your personal computer probably won't be able to read a drive that looks like Swiss cheese. The heat from the drill might even cause damage that permanently warps the drive. But as long as there are intact sections of hard drive platters, the data stored on those sections is still technically accessible.
Hard drives contain sensitive information that can be accessed by hackers, identity thieves, or anyone who finds them in the trash. They also contain hazardous materials that can pollute the soil and water if they end up in landfills.
The strong magnetic fields produced by these magnets is enough to erase or scramble the data. Since hard drives also store their data on magnetic media, you would expect similar results.
For example, if you want to delete some of the data that's in a database, you would simply perform a purge on that data. In some cases, we want to remove data so that it could never be restored. And in that case, we would want to wipe that particular data. This is an unrecoverable removal of that data.
Myth #1: You can destroy a hard drive by putting it in water. Truth: Hard drives are pretty well sealed, so dunking it into water quickly will most likely not affect it at all.
If scratching the platters with a screwdriver is too pedestrian for you, these disks can be destroyed in a number of other creative ways. You can use sandpaper, a rotary tool—fire, even—as long as the surface of the disk is scratched or burned off.
A thorough hammering will destroy a hard drive. Pummel it until the drive bursts open, then go to town on the platter. Sure, any hammer will do the trick, but why would you use just any hammer when you could use a sledgehammer?!
Shredding documents has many advantages over burning. In most cases, shredding is proven to be more secure, safer, more environmentally friendly, more efficient, and easier than burning.
Shredding includes difficult guitar techniques such as "sweep, alternate and tremolo picking; string skipping; multi-finger tapping; slurs, [and] trills." Shred guitarists use two- or three-octave scales, triads, or modes, played ascending and descending at a fast tempo.