You’ve got a stack of hard drives taking up space in your closet, don’t you? Same, same. Every few years, as the costs go down and space goes up, I upgrade, and all the old repositories for my Word files, photographs, and memories get stacked away as if I’ll ever actually use them again. As if.
The truth is that I don’t want to toss ’em because I know how data fragments stick around on old disk drives like ghosts in a digital afterlife. They just pile up. But there are ways to destroy the data on them for good without leaving any chance that some creep in the future could slurp up that data.
It’s called file shredding.
cleaning all the files securely
Plug the external drive into your computer. Simply highlighting files and deleting them within the Finder (macOS) or File Explorer (Windows) doesn’t scrub them permanently. They leave imprints on the disk, for lack of a better term, that can be detected and recovered later on.
It’s not cheap, and it’s not easy, but a determined thief or snoop can do it. For macOS, I recommend using a third-party app to securely shred the files on your disk. For macOS, candidates include Permanent Eraser, Shredo, and CCleaner for Mac. Make sure you target the external drive (the one you want to erase) when you run the program and not the computer’s drive itself.
If you’re getting rid of an entire computer, you can simply factory reset the whole thing. That’ll reformat the boot drive and securely erase all the information on it, with no hope for file recovery.
But this process works for computers’ internal disk drives, too, if you’d rather. In that case, there’s no drive to plug into the computer, so just perform these steps on the computer’s built-in drive.
- Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility).
- Select the disk you want to erase.
- Click Erase.
- Click Security Options. This won’t be visible if you’re using a solid state drive (SSD) instead of a hard disk drive (HDD).
- Choose the number of passes. The more, the longer it’ll take but the more thorough the erasing process will be.
- Click Erase.
For Windows PCs, third-party file shredders include Eraser, CCleaner, and BleachBit. They’ll work much the same as they do for macOS. Just install the program, run it, and follow the directions on the screen. And make sure you select the external drive you want to erase and not your computer’s internal drive.
Wiping an entire computer is less straightforward on Windows than it is on a Mac. You have to go into the command terminal and enter certain prompts. Your best bet is to find a tutorial on YouTube or consult the Microsoft forums to follow the steps as you perform them.
destroying the disk for good
If you plan to sell the hard drive, stop here. You obviously won’t find a buyer for it if you smash it to smithereens. If you just want to junk it, the traditional method I always heard from tech people growing up was to take a power drill and put four holes through the magnetic disk that gives the hard disk drive its name.
This isn’t the most secure method, but it’s sufficient if you aren’t using the hard drive to hold any extremely sensitive data. Could a thief gather up the remnants and try to pull data off them? It’s possible.
But you already shredded the files, right? And who wants that data badly enough to go through the trouble, since they can’t just plug it into a computer anymore, now that it’s a mangled mess.
You can alternatively use a recycling service such as Shred-it. They’ll not only wipe all the file remnants from your disks, but they’ll literally shred them into confetti once they’re done and securely dispose of the remains.
The downside is that it isn’t free. If you’re disposing of old disks for a business or disks that hold particularly sensitive information, such as health data, it could be worth it. If you’re just ditching old drives with your unfinished novel and photographs of car shows, then you’ll be fine doing it yourself at home.
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