My daughter has given me a laptop that is faulty, it works but overheats periodically and switches off. Before I dispose of it she would like the files shredded. Which is the best way to do this, there is no internet connection for it, so will need to be something easily accessible?
I had a SATA2 drive fail such that I couldn't wipe it electronically. Normally I'd pull the platters out and bend then, but time was limited. I cut the whole thing in half using my Pedrazolli Cold Saw :)
OOI, if it's a useable laptop apart from that, have you (or anyone) given the fan a blow out? They often get what looks like a layer of felt across them and so will quickly overheat?
formatting link
If you can see where the air should come out (often the side or back) and where it is sucked in (underneath?), ideally stop the fan spinning by poking a think cable-tie into the fan to stop it spinning then either put a vacuum cleaner on the inlet or an airline on the exhaust (to blow the cr*p back out the way it came in. If it's going to be scrapped anyway you have little to lose by taking the back off and seeing if you can get to the fan properly.
I hate destroying functional stuff so whilst Andy's sledgehammer solution would work, personally I'd:
1) Blow / clean the fan out and see if it fixes it (then you have a working laptop to use, sell or give away, after the drive is wiped with something like Dban).
formatting link
2) Take the drive out, put it in an external caddy or another laptop and wipe it via that.
3) Take the drive out and smash it up. ;-(
3a) If it was only a very small capacity drive (
"DBAN users should be aware of some product limitations, including:
No guarantee of data removal (e.g. DBAN does not detect or securely erase SSDs) No audit-ready reporting for regulatory compliance Limited hardware support (e.g. no RAID dismantling) No customer support or regular software updates"
For home users with spinning-rust hard drives, yes. I don't know about you, but when companies acknowledge the shortcomings of their products I tend to trust them more.
Mmm, depending what the OP has on the disk, I'd probably want to be surer.
I've bought a few S/H and apparently wiped HDs via NGs and ebay. Just a brief peep with recovery software revealed stuff that really should have been removed properly.
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