Where can I have my Hard Drive Erased?

[phoop007]

Hi i have a 180GB HDD from a acer aspire which broke ( I may ask forums later)

And I want to sell the laptop for parts (maby)

If I do sell it I want to erase the HDD.

I cant erase the HDD because the laptop wont even go on. So I need to find a local or national store that does it...

any suggestions?

Oh yeah how much would it cost you think?\

Thanks so much.

[Geek-9pm]

Do you have another computer? Or maybe a friend with a computer. Just doing fa format will not erase all data. You need a program to do that.
Here is a video:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/157126/how_to_completely_erase_a_hard_drive.html

[BisquitMaker]

A second suggestion is to use shred. http://linux.die.net/man/1/shred
Run shred on the disk.

[rthompson80819]

Near where I live there is a recycling center that shred's HDs, think of a paper shredder on steroids, and they only charge abut $10 US.  I'm sure there are many of those around the world.

[Computer_Commando]

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/extracting-data-from-a-dead-laptop-with-a-laptop-hard-drive-adapter/5160538

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsed59DWtbQ

[Doug]

This could be a little off topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f34rYVOzHOU

[BC_Programmer]

This could be a little off topic.

But it's still awesome 

[Geek-9pm]

But it's still awesome 

Yes, but do you have any proof that it erased the data?

[patio]

Yes, but do you have any proof that it erased the data?

I hope you're kidding...

[truenorth]

Hopefully getting back to the question--if the desire is to sell the laptop WITH a HDD (just erased not destroyed) in order to maximize the monetary gain from said sale, Then it should be removed and slaved to another computer where a software solution can be applied. However i am not sure what " i have a 180GB HDD from a acer aspire which broke"  "broke" is it the Computer or the HDD? I suppose ultimately it will come down to the monetary return versus the time and effort required to get to a point of security of sale.truenorth

[Geek-9pm]

Yes, destroying a good drive is pointless. It can be erased in software.

I hope you're kidding...

Yes.   But... do you recall that paper shredders at one type just cut documents into long ribbons? Later they went to cross cut paper shredder machines.

The U.S. embassy in Iran used strip-cut paper shredders to reduce paper pages to strips before the embassy was taken over in 1979 (though not entirely successfully). After Colonel Oliver North told Congress that he used a Schleicher Intimus 007 S cross-cut model to shred Iran-Contra documents, sales for that company increased nearly 20 percent in 1987.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_shredder
Just a random thought..

[Kenops]

This could be a little off topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f34rYVOzHOU

Well thats fun

[Transfusion]

Dariks boot and nuke works perfectly in your situation-"About DBAN
Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction."
www.dban.org

[Serune]

Ok this is a fe wtips for you, get a computer or a laptop , get a case for your hdd to make it external and use testdrive to erase the index saved in your hdd from every format.
There is a 90% chance to delete all the information you ever had plus any raw data.

[Allan]

What?