How to properly dispose hard drive

Ok so now after reading the title your next question must be that why would I even want to do that it’s so dumb !!!

Just consider that you were working on a very important project and now that project is finished and you are required to dispose of everything, especially the digital data which can get to someone wrong or is very much inconvenient to keep it as it is.

So then you think OK because I have to dispose of the data. I'll just delete it and then I am good to go OR I’ll just format the hard drive and everything will be good to go RIGHT ????

NO!!!!!

It is not as simple as you might think it is because when you format or delete the data on a hard drive you cannot see it and you also get the reserved space back but in reality this deleted data is still there lying dormant in your HDD.

Which can still be fairly easily recovered by any service provider in the data retrieval field with their professional tools for doing this job.

To top it off if you delete the sensitive hard drive data and then choose to sell it to someone and that someone uses the tools to recover the data just because he is curious regarding what kind of work you have been doing then …….baby you are exposed !!!!

Now this not only happens with hard drives but with other forms of storage as well, for example your mobile phone is a classic example of how people can get screwed without having the proper knowledge.

Suppose you bought a new phone you are enjoying using, you record some videos that only you want to keep to yourself and not show the world about it because it is PERSONAL…!

Then one day you get tired of this mobile phone and delete all the data you had in there and sell the phone for some cash and then you buy a new mobile phone.

Well now everything is working fine and jolly until one day you discover your private video is not so private anymore as you can now see it on the internet ...SHOCKED!!!!

The problem is people love to probe things around and try to find new things especially if those things have been used by someone and not having a proper knowledge can make you a BIG time victime of this.

This was just one example of how people can be the victim. Now consider storing your bank passwords, your card details , digital signatures , important documents etc in hard drives and and mobile phone storages and then formatting and giving it away for some money thinking you are making profit ….but in reality you are actually endangering your own property.

Let us see how actually we can avoid this !!!

The most Secure way of disposing your Hard drive is  just Freaking break it !!!!!!! 

Yes you read it right just inflict any physical damage so hard that it stops functioning and also make sure that the track of the hard drive is completely destroyed so that all the information stored in it will be lost.

For any soft damage i.e. without inflicting physical harm you can accomplish this but it will be time consuming …

1. As already mentioned before that even after formatting your hard drive you can still retrieve your lost data ….so in order to counter this you will have to format the same disc at least 5-6 time and not just that , each time you format the hard drive fill it up again with some garbage data and then format it again what this will do is that all this redundant data will overwrite your sensitive data and make it very hard to retrieve it with such crap data overlapping it.
2. You can also use powerful magnets to destroy the data present on the Hard disc drive as the mechanical hard drives use basically a magnetic spinning track on which each and every data is stored so thus by bringing it near a very powerful magnetic field can disrupt the data which is stored in it 
3. Suppose if you want to completely disrupt the data ok not deleting it rather disrupting it so that even after it gets retrieved it won’t make any kind of sense it will become garbage data.This is called data shredding. You shred the data such that you cannot find any connection between them; it is just like how any master criminal would do to hide the evidence tracing back to him.

Wrapping Up:

Just wanted people to realise what happens if they are working with some sensitive data and in case they want to dispose of it off. And not just working with it, even storing your personal details like bank account numbers, card numbers etc .Formatting or deleting the data is a very childish way of disposing it as the data can be retrieved fairly easily by any professional tools.

This is a fail safe mechanism of keeping the deleted data in your hard drive due to the fact that many times when data gets wiped off easily due to some crash or a user unknowingly deteles it then you as the data owner might strongly want to recover it.

Therefore such data retrieval tools are made in the first place for doing such noble tasks but humans as we are we just find a way to use such things in a completely wrong direction as well so you cannot go tracing all the bad people instead just follow the main steps given here and be safe.