When Disposing of a Laptop or it's Hard Drive Remember to Eliminate Your Personal Data

Data once stored on a hard drive is almost impossible remove completely. Most computer users do not realise that when they store a picture, a letter or surf the net that data is continually being stored on their hard drive. Identify theft may then occur if your data is later intercepted by a thief.

You will probably not consider data security in your laptop until you decide to scrap or sell it on. It would not be sensible to give up your laptop without first removing all your personal data; however, this is not easy for the typical user to achieve. You may try deleting personal files, but all this does is to hide them from the directory list. They are still there! Even reformatting a hard drive will not remove data, all it does is to reset the file and folder names to blanks. There are various software programs that scramble the data or fill the complete hard drive with zeros. The problem for the user is that it is almost impossible to tell if the data has been removed fully or whether the laptop has just crashed. If your data has only been partially removed it may appear that the hard drive is empty. However, there are many programs that can then reconstruct all or most of the original information.

Since all your data is stored in the laptop’s hard drive the obvious way to eliminate it would be to destroy the hard drive. This unfortunately is not as easy as it sounds. You will, firstly, have to locate and remove the laptop’s hard drive; this is usually inside a removable cover or behind the back fascia of the laptop. It depends on the make and model of exactly where the hard drive is located but can usually be removed without too much effort.

Destroying a hard drive and eliminating your data is not as straightforward as you may expect. Once you have removed it from the laptop many users may try putting it into a bucket of water, hitting it with a large hammer, burning it in a fire, putting it in the microwave oven. None of these actions will destroy the data and may be dangerous; the hard drive will most likely be damaged but the data could still be extracted by a determined thief. The only sure way to eliminate the data is to destroy the hard drive platters; this is where your personal information is stored. You will need to open up the hard drive casing to and destroy or remove the platter or platters. These look like one or more shiny metal disks and can be removed using a suitable screwdriver or star point tool. Don’t be tempted to play with the magnets found inside the hard drive as they are very powerful and result in injury if they snap together with your finger in between.

Removing the platter or platters may be considered enough to thwart a thief from stealing your data. However, to be absolutely sure that your data is totally destroyed you should destroy the platters. You will need to cut or bend then but be sure to wear eye protection and gloves as they tend to shatter rather than bend.

It depends on how important your data is as to how much effort you go to in destroying it. However, whatever you do take great care as hard drives are not meant to be taken apart and have dangerous rare-earth magnets.