Old hard drives

[mike80]

I've got a couple of old hard drives that have been floating around for years. I'm not sure if there is much, if anything, on them, but I'd like to check before I bin them for good. Is there an ideally cheap way to plug these into my modern laptop via USB?

Pics below for reference.

[Mandat]

I've got one of these, which allows you to connect a variety of old drives.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08Y8TZX6M?ref_=ppx_hz...

[speedyman]

Just drill a few holes in them.

[Derek Smith]

Take them apart. They contain decent magnets. Easy enough then to destroy the platters.

[Griffith4ever]

speedyman said:

Just drill a few holes in them.

Gotta check for those old Bitcoins! :-)

[Riley Blue]

On a similar theme, I've half a dozen laptops and four PCs cluttering up my office and would like to donate them to a charity. In addition to deleting all data, what should I do to them and how?

[Griffith4ever]

If they've got a recovery partition on them then just do a complete system restore.

[carguy45]

USB to IDE convertor. I've a few in work of varying types for connecting IDE drives like above, or the new SATA ones, NVMe drives, etc.

[carguy45]

Riley Blue said:

On a similar theme, I've half a dozen laptops and four PCs cluttering up my office and would like to donate them to a charity. In addition to deleting all data, what should I do to them and how?

I've no idea what type of data you have on them, but if it's in any way confidential or would raise GDPR concerns, a delete isn't really enough. Anyone with a decent third-party software recovery app can restore deleted files relatively easily. Ideally, I would completely remove the hard drives for disposal (drive shredding ideally) but the machines have to be in a working order for the charity to take them, then a few runs of full disk formats and a reinstall of the OS would be the basic.

Of course, if there's nothing on there that you're remotely concerned about anyone accessing, I would just use restore to factory settings. Do they have Windows on them? Windows 8 onwards has a handy built-in reset option to put it back to a factory state with no personal files.

[WrekinCrew]

A drive platter makes an excellent mirror for checking contact lenses or debris in your eye. You don't get the double reflection of a conventional glass mirror when very close to it.

[eeLee]

carguy45 said:

I've no idea what type of data you have on them, but if it's in any way confidential or would raise GDPR concerns, a delete isn't really enough. Anyone with a decent third-party software recovery app can restore deleted files relatively easily. Ideally, I would completely remove the hard drives for disposal (drive shredding ideally) but the machines have to be in a working order for the charity to take them, then a few runs of full disk formats and a reinstall of the OS would be the basic.

Of course, if there's nothing on there that you're remotely concerned about anyone accessing, I would just use restore to factory settings. Do they have Windows on them? Windows 8 onwards has a handy built-in reset option to put it back to a factory state with no personal files.

Actually, this is partly true.
Ideally you would want to run a 3-pass wipe on the drives (DBAN on USB key) and then reinstall the/an OS. My low-hanging fruit approach is actually to format the drive, install Windows, Bitlocker the drive completely on then completely off, format it again and that's it. The Bitlocker process basically does a wipe.

Another option would be to format the drive and then put Windows on it, use it for 3-4 months as your daily PC. We had a forensics case with such a device and could not get much from the drive using Encase and FTK....if they came one day zero, we would have gotten everything.

Donate them to Africa, there are programmes for this.

For disposal, drill is good and a drop from a good height usually will make it too expensive to get anything from the drive (especially if the platters are glass).

PATA-schmata

[FlossyThePig]

Riley Blue said:

On a similar theme, I've half a dozen laptops and four PCs cluttering up my office and would like to donate them to a charity. In addition to deleting all data, what should I do to them and how?

Many years ago my next door neighbour help set up a charity called TWAM (Tools With A Mission) which basically accepts old tools, including old computers. They refurbish them if necessary and ship them out to various countries in Africa.
Check out the TWAM website as they may have something local to you.

When a company I worked for did a mass upgrade of all computers in the office they were delighted to give the old PCs away to a good cause and not have the additional expense of disposal.

[wyson]

Can just use a hard drive enclosure.

Plenty of these on Amazon and eBay for £20 to £30.

Also, loads of laptop donation programs. Just google “donate laptop”. They will have a guide on what to do to prep the laptop before giving it away. Usually, you don’t have to do anything at all.

[Baldchap]

carguy45 said:

USB to IDE convertor. I've a few in work of varying types for connecting IDE drives like above, or the new SATA ones, NVMe drives, etc.

I have exactly this product. Been working well for decades.