Wiping hard
 

Husband got a new computer and we’d like to recycle his old all-in-one that runs on Windows 10. What is the best way to wipe the hard drive? Thanks.

Hammer

With old comps and laptops, I have always destroyed hard drive.
Nerds always seem to be able to recover stuff.
For peace of mind, I agree with the hammer solution.

When you mention recycle, does that mean you want to wipe the drive and give to someone else to use or take it to a recycle center for disposal? If you mean to reuse the computer, you will need to make sure you have a recovery disk so you can reinstall the OS after you wipe the drive. If you are going to scrap it, a drill will work or often times computers have a utility built in that will accomplish this as part of the Bios. You may need to contact the manufacturer to use this.

Sledge hammer is the most foolproof method. A large one.

Did that actually work for you? I tried that in the past and was not able to cause much damage. I then took it to work and smashed it in a hydraulic press.

How about other electronics, GPS, Cell phones, iPod??

I tend to take out the hard drive, with a suitable adapter you can plug it into a USB port and get that file that you forgot to move to the new computer....

Use a smaller hammer.

When you delete a file from a device, all you are doing is allowing the data space that the file was using to be used for another purpose, like adding another file. This is controlled by the operating system software. But, the original file that you thought you "deleted" is still there. A computer technician may be able to wipe a hard drive clean, but why risk it?

Remove the hard drive. It's encased in a slim metal box. Fill a casserole dish or lasagna pan 3/4 with hot water and a 1/4 cup of vinegar. Submerge the hard drive in the lasagna pan. Let it sit there a couple of minutes until the water fills the spaces in the box. Sprinkle baking soda into the water, maybe 1/8 of a cup total. Let that sit there a couple of minutes. Drain the water from the pan, then pour some table syrup, or cola, or honey, or fruit punch, into the pan and dunk the hard drive in it, turning it a few times to make sure the sticky stuff gets into the box.

Your hard drive will now be completely useless to anyone, for anything other than perhaps a door stop or ant bait.

what a great idea! i'd have never thought of using household items to do such a thing, but makes perfect sense. i used to use bleach in a bucket of water to get rid of old bank files before the days of PC's & shredders

Get a hard drive eraser dvd from Amazon, not expensive, run it twice (sometimes it allows only once) - you’ll have a usable but unrecoverable previous data drive. Back up your drive first, you’ll never recover anything afterwards.

Many computers today don't have a disc drive.

Another solution: Take a ¼ inch drill and make a couple of holes in the drive.

True, I use an external disc drive - how do you play dvds? I suppose you can drown the thing too.

We used to take them to a shooting range, hook them up to a 12v battery to spin up the drive, and then (from a safe distance) put a round through them. The explosion is impressive...

But this has safer options.

Top 5 Hard Drive Destruction Methods That Actually Work

I have an external DVD drive with a usb cable. I think it will play movies on my Windows 11 laptop, but when I tried to use it on my Samsung tablet, it will not play the disc. I guess it must need the Windows OS.

Okay so water doesn’t work but the hammer does I’d put the drive into a couple of old pillow cases and a garbage bag, then hammer away. I have done it in the past and no - nothing explodes.

Drill a hole through the drive and the platters.

Gotta say, the title pulled my mind into a totally difference direction. With the price of t.p. had to wonder.

I personally have removed the drives from old computers. I then disassemble the drives. Very easy to do with a cordless drill and the correct star bit that fits the screws on the drive. Once you have the platters out of the drive they can be damaged beyond use.

As to erasing the drives so the computer can be used. As others have said there are programs that wipe the drives but you will need to reinstall the operating system. Nothing is foolproof other than destruction of the drive.

Why not keep it?
 

Reformat the drive and use it for extra storage or maybe as a backup drive. You can get an external enclosure, mount the drive in that, and use it as backup device.

That may have been good advice 20 years ago, but today, you can buy a 1TB portable hard drive for less than $20. You can even buy a thumb drive that will hold 1TB of data.

You can take it to best buy, they will delete your drive and discard your laptop, and or if you want to keep it. You can go to settings and delete or take it back to factory settings. I go to BestBuy. Good Luck.

Agree, but, if that solution does not fit your needs, any of the leaders of the Villages computer club seems more than happy to help anyone, regular member or not, they always help people individually after the meeting's major presentation, solved many problems for us in the past !

I doubt that is a free service. According to Windows, it can take from several minutes to several hours to wipe a hard drive, depending on the size of the hard drive.

Won't work
 

You need to break the seal. Besides that mistake the stuff your using will allow full recovery. Destroyed highly classified drives. I know.

im so glad its not about a bathroom break.......

Fact check: TRUE

2 shots from my 45ACP did the trick.

From the title I thought this post was going in a different direction. I was going to suggest getting a Japanese Toilet.

From the title I thought this post was going in a different direction. I was going to suggest getting a Japanese Toilet.

I hear professionals use bleach bit. On the hard drive that is, they use bleach bit. The whole toilet question is a different topic.

If you are interested in a quick, secure, and easy way to wipe a hard drive, try Darik's Boot and Nuke (dban). It is a free way to wipe a hard drive with DOD level approval. I have used it for years professionally and it has worked very well.

All you need to do is to use the built in reset command in Windows and select the deep clean option after telling it to remove all users and files. This overwrites all areas of the drive and destroys any file info or structures.

This is how we handled the wiping of old systems at Coca Cola prior to returning them to the vendor after their 3 years of use were up.

Using a hammer or any type of physical destruction is just stupid. You can easily wipe the drive and resell the old computer.

Make sure you take the drive apart and get the magnets out they are very strong and great for when you need a magnet. Take the silver platters and destroy them.

Obviously, that makes sense, if you want to sell the computer. But, if you want to trash the computer, I'll bet you a dollar that some people would not successfully remove all files by using your instructions. But, they do know how to use a hammer.

If it worked for her it should work for you too.
https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=4f1fa...1haWxzLw&ntb=1

This is a good suggestion for traditional, spinning media disk drives. For SSD's, the drive vendor typically has an erase app that you should use.

What in the world do y’all have on your PC’s that you’re so worried about someone else seeing 😂

Banking information? Taxes?