Where's Magneto when you need him...

April 6, 2009 9:35 PM

I have an external hard drive that I'm sending back to the manufacturer due to an issue. I already have all of the data off of it, but (thankfully), a few days after I got the data, the thing is dead. The question: how do I erase all of the data off of it even if I can't boot it up?

Maybe I'm being a bit paranoid, and the people at Seagate will just toss the drive, but I'm a bit paranoid.

Backstory: I've got a 500gb hard drive with a bunch of person information/pics/stuff I wouldn't want anyone else to have. The drive itself didn't fail: the USB connector became unsoldered and luckily, when I noticed this, I stopped moving the thing and had Seagate send me a new one so I could send this one back. I managed to keep it up and going long enough to get the data off, but now, it's done. I bumped it, and it seems to be gone. After spending an hour trying to dismantle part of it and get the usb connector out of the innards (it's pushed all the way in and loose), I give up.

Question: So how do I make sure they don't get my data? I mean, will they look at it? Or will the hard drive just get chunked? Any clue how that works? If the magnet approach is the only way, what kind of magnet do I need?

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but eh. Any advice would be extraordinarily helpful.

posted by SNWidget to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Also, before anyone suggests soaking it in bleach or something along those lines, I actually have to return it to not get charged for the warranty replacement. Therefore, I can't just crack the thing and be done with it.
posted by SNWidget at 9:41 PM on April 6

I think I'd just get an epically large magnet and hope for the best. Good luck!
posted by DMan at 9:51 PM on April 6

Seagate Data Overwriting Process For Returned Products

The Seagate repair process ensures that all data is overwritten in a way that exceeds the DOD specifications. Seagate’s process of overwriting data may be considered an advantage among those in the health industry user community (e.g., HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, April 2003, enforces patient data privacy and confidentiality), the financial community, the government user community, and other users that deal with sensitive data. In addition to its process of overwriting data, Seagate also takes steps to ensure the collection, warehousing, shipping, testing, refurbishing and scrapping of disk drives meet Seagate security standards which generally exceed industry averages.
posted by netbros at 9:59 PM on April 6

I'm assuming you can't remove the drive from what sounds like its external enclosure, in order to attach it to a PC and run a regular secure-erase program? (I'm assuming that is the case in the remainder of my comment...if it's not, that's my suggestion.)

I don't know that there exist any surefire ways of erasing the drive that are both nondestructive to the drive and do not involve actually using the drive mechanism.

A sufficiently powerful magnetic field might wipe the drive, but it'd be tough since it's in a metal shell, and to wipe magnetic media you need an alternating magnetic field, not a static one like you'd get from a bar magnet. I suspect that with a field strong enough to wipe the platters through the shell, you'd induce currents that would melt the drive controller circuits pretty obviously. It would probably come out looking like it'd spent time in a microwave.

You could try getting an old reel-to-reel tape head degausser or bulk VHS tape eraser and run it over both sides of the drive (remember to turn it on, hold it for a while, then move it slowly away BEFORE turning it off — this is how you demagnetize thoroughly) but I'm doubtful it'll do much. I think what you really need is something more on the order of an MRI machine's coils than the puny one in a tape head degausser. You could probably DIY something if you had a lot of wire sitting around, but my guess is that you might quickly be approaching a higher cost in supplies than the drive is worth to return.

The only other method I've heard of for securely erasing drives is heating the platters until they hit the Curie point, at which point they'll be effectively demagnetized. However I think the Curie temperature for hard drive platters is high enough that you'd be melting plastic. (There are a lot of discussions of HDD platter Curie temperatures around; nobody seems to know for sure, but estimates range from a few hundred C up to temperatures above the melting point of aluminum.)

If the files on the drive are of the sort of "personal nature" that would be of interest to someone just rifling through the disk's contents (*cough* homemade porn), I would probably sacrifice the return value and pulverize it with a hammer. It seems as though it's bordering on SOP at many low-budget computer repair shops to toss people's hard drives for stored porn, and I wouldn't see why a hard drive refurb shop would be much different. (Since they have no contact with customers and there's less chance of being confronted or caught, I'd imagine it'd be more common. Probably depends on the volume they're handling.) If it was data that's only of value or interest to a small number of people — business intelligence or similar — then I might chance it, since the people doing the erasing probably aren't the ones you're keeping it from. Financial data that could be used for identity theft is somewhere in the middle, IMO.

The main concern I'd have with returning the drive is from the sound of it, it's only the USB connector that's broken, meaning the drive mechanism inside is probably fine. That means it's trivial for someone to open the case up, remove the drive, and extract the data. If there's stuff on the drive that you'd really like to not show up on 4chan, I'd think seriously about just not returning it.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:26 PM on April 6

Tell them this. Or, if you want to fib a bit, that it's your office policy that that all information must be destroyed before leaving the building. All hard drive manufacturers have a policy for dealing with this kind of thing. (Think of all the government, banking, medical companies who have strict data destruction policies.) Their big concern is that you're getting a free hard drive off of them so they will probably want a scalp off the thing to prove that it's no longer a working hard drive. This will probably involve sending them some important part with a serial number on it.

Oh and a magnet won't work, that's an old misconception left over from the era floppy disks. The magnets inside the hard drive are almost certainly the strongest magnets in your house. To generate enough of a magnetic field to wipe the plates you'd likely cause serious damage to everything/one nearby.
posted by Ookseer at 11:10 PM on April 6

These people make devices .... http://www.machine-solution.com/products.asp?dept=241
posted by Xhris at 12:02 AM on April 7

How much does the drive cost? Whatever that is, ask yourself if it is worth paying that to not divulge your data. Sounds to me like you are better off paying for a new drive than risking your data getting out there in the real world. Consider it insurance, pay for a new drive and destroy the old one yourself.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 3:55 AM on April 7

This doesn't sound like a bad hard drive at all, but just a problem with the physical USB connector. Open the case and remove the drive. Connect it to a desktop and run Darik's Boot and Nuke on it, then put it back in the case for return.
posted by odinsdream at 6:39 AM on April 7

I contacted Seagate, and they don't go into the drives. Just to make sure, though, I borrowed an external shell from a friend this morning and and hooked up, and nuked the thing from orbit.

I got lucky that my friend had one around - he hadn't been around last night, and it was only because I mentioned it to him that he said he had something that might work.

Thanks for the advice everyone - if this hadn't worked, I'm not sure what I would have done. Probably eaten the cost, actually.
posted by SNWidget at 9:13 PM on April 7

And yes, the important thing was some homemade photos.
posted by SNWidget at 9:13 PM on April 7