Question: I have 3 old 3.5″ internal hard drives sitting gathering dust at the moment. 2 are SATA, and one IDE. I want to either start putting them to use, or dispose of them to clear up some space.

What is the best approach towards disposing of the drives in terms of thoroughly cleaning the contents before throwing away or selling? Are there any recommendations for good software to use to do this?

Are there any 100% successful methods which result in having a usable drive at the end?

Answer: There is a similar question on Server Fault: How do I destroy a hard disk? – I wrote one of the answers: 🙂

If you are looking for standard procedures and reliable methods, you could read the Guidelines for Media Sanitization (PDF) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

For any given medium, there are three basic methods:

  • Clear
  • Purge
  • Physical Destruction

For hard drives they recommend:

Clear:

Overwrite media by using agency-approved and validated overwriting technologies/methods/tools.

Physical Destruction:

  • Disintegrate
  • Shred
  • Pulverize
  • Incinerate: incinerate hard disk drives by burning the hard disk drives in a licensed incinerator.

Purge:

  • Purge using Secure Erase. The SecureErase software can be downloaded fromthe University of California, SanDiego (UCSD) CMRR site. Purge harddisk drives by either purging thehard disk drive in an
  • NSA/CSS-approved automatic degausseror by disassembling the hard diskdrive and purging the enclosedplatters with an NSA/CSS-approveddegaussing wand.
  • Purge media byusing agency-approved and validatedpurge technologies/tools.
  • Degaussing any current generation hard disk will render the drive permanently unusable.