A common way to “erase” data is to format the hard drive, but you don’t actually erase the drive of its data when you do this, but instead only erase the location information for the data, making it “lost” to the operating system. Since the OS can’t see the data, the drive looks empty when you look at its contents. However, all the data is still there and, unless you truly erase the hard drive, can be recovered using special software or hardware. Remember that erase, delete, wipe, and shred are technically different terms. The most responsible thing you can do before recycling a hard drive, or even disposing of one, is to completely erase the hard drive. If you don’t, you risk exposing sensitive personal data that you previously deleted—data like social security numbers, account numbers, passwords, etc. According to most governments and standards organizations, there are only three effective methods of erasing a hard drive, the best of which depends on your budget and future plans for the hard drive: Regardless of what you call it, a data destruction program, such as DBAN, is a piece of software designed to overwrite a hard drive so many times, and in a certain way, as to make the ability to extract information from the drive nearly impossible. Some more stringent hard drive erasing standards forbid using data destruction software, probably because of the possibility of user error and the variety of software and methods that exist. However, as long as your drive doesn’t contain national security information, you should feel very comfortable using any one of these programs to erase a hard drive. Some NSA approved automatic degaussers can erase dozens of hard drives in an hour and cost tens of thousands of US dollars. NSA approved degaussing wands, used to manually degauss a hard drive, can be purchased for around $500. According to the NIST Guidelines for Media Sanitization (800-88 Rev. 1), destroying a hard drive makes recovery “infeasible using state of the art laboratory techniques and results in the subsequent inability to use the media for storage of data.” Most of the standards that exist to erase a hard drive mention several ways to physically destroy one, including disintegration, grinding, pulverization, incineration, melting, and shredding. You can destroy a hard drive yourself by nailing or drilling through it several times, making sure the hard drive platter is being penetrated each time. In fact, any method of destroying the hard drive platter is sufficient, including sanding the platter after being removed or shattering it (as shown here). If you’d rather not do this yourself, several companies offer the service for a fee. A few services will even fire a round of bullets through your hard drive and send you the video!
