It’s extremely handy to keep all you’re information on your personal computer for banking, paying bills, purchasing items on the internet, etc. But what happens when it’s time to either upgrade your hard drive or get rid of it. The common fear is that some unscrupulous person can extract all that information you’ve been squirreling away on your hard drive over the years and then have complete access to your life and personal information. Don’t think it could happen? Think again. Identity theft is the number one growing crime in the United States and has exploded like a fast moving plague with no signs of a cure in the near future.
So what can you do to protect yourself from your information being taken off an old hard drive that you’ve decided to discard? Some people are content with simply deleting everything off the drive and or reformatting the drive. In most cases you probably won’t have an issue but it’s a crap shoot and only takes the right person to get their hands on that drive that you think is clean to extract all the information off it. Hard drives generally store all the information that has ever been placed on them forever no matter what you do the right person with the right skill can land you in a situation that you would never have imaged could occur. Rather than rolling the dice it’s better to be safe than sorry and disassemble the drive then physically destroy the platters. The following is a step by step guide with pictures “Ooo pictures!” on how it’s done.
I’m demonstrating how this is done on a newer 320gig Western Digital and with a couple of simple tools that you most likely have around the house. It also only takes a matter of a couple minutes; there is also a nifty toy surprise at the end that most geeks will enjoy.
Once the hard drive is removed from the computer place it on a stable area, such as a work bench, where you can safely perform the dissection.
You’ll notice that there are six small screws on the top of the hard drive, most likely you won’t have the correct bit to extract them but if you have a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers you can find one that will just barely fit. Using a pair of pliers to help turn them place the screw driver into the screw head and extract all the screws. To speed up the process you can use a drill; which is what I do since I’m not going to reuse the screws, I used a 3/16 bit for my drill in this demonstration.
Don’t miss the screw that is hidden under part of the label as you will have a very difficult time removing the top without taking that one out too.
Once all the screws are out place a flat bladed screwdriver under each side and gently pry the lid off. There is a small strip of compound that helps hold the lid in place and with just a little effort the lid will pop right off.
Once the lid is off you’ll then be able to see the shiny hard driver platters that you’ll soon be removing. At this point you can discard the lid or use it to hold all the various bits of the drive as you extract them.
You’ll now notice the read/write arm of the hard drive that runs back and forth over the platter when it’s accessed. This arm has to be moved out of the way for easier removal of the platters.
You’ll notice a very small stop at the back of the arm mechanism that will either be metal or plastic; I’ve seen both types in different drives.
Take your flat blade screwdriver and press down at the end of the stop then carefully rotate the read/write arm away from the platters.
In the center of the platters you’ll notice a small hub that has six screws in it. These are the same type of screws that you found in the lid. You’ll notice that they are generally much tighter than the ones that were in the lid, extract all these screws and set them aside.
Once the screws are out the platter hub ring it can be removed with your fingers; which will then show the completely exposed platter.
You’ll need to pull out a small plastic guide that has several little arms that ride between each platter. It can be pulled out with pliers or popped out with your flat blade screw driver.
In between each platter, depending on the size of your hard drive, you’ll find small metal rings; which slide right off.
Once you’ve extracted all the platters you’ll have any number of very shiny metal discs. These are the actual discs that store all the information on the hard drive; at this point you can discard everything else.
The platters from this particular drive are metal and not something that you can simply cut up with scissors or bend very easy. You’ll need to decide at this point what you wish to do with the discs, you could bend them into a tortilla chip in a vice, such as I did with this particular platter, or just hit them a number of times with a hammer then throw them in the garbage or even totally Geekout and turn them into a wind chime, “Oooo Nerdalicious”. Now for the secret toy surprise I mentioned….
By removing the three screws holding the read/write arm assembly you’ll find two extremely powerful "rare earth" mini magnets that you should be able to just slide off the metal plates they are sitting on. They can be a little fragile so be aware of that but otherwise they are amazingly strong. I’ve found that some hard drives have these magnets attached but most aren’t.
I hope you found this article informative and helpful in protecting your personal data and if just one person’s information is saved from theft then for me it was worth the effort I put into writing it. –HD
