scriptasylum
OSNN Senior Addict
- Joined
- 25 Dec 2001
- Messages
- 832
My brand new 120GB 8MB cache WD harddrive died on me the other day. I only had it for a few days too
Anyway, Newegg RMA'd it easy enough, but I had data on it. I really think the controller on the drive was bad (smelled the all-too-familiar smell of burning silicon) so chances are the data on the platters was still there. Seeing as I have some sensitive data on there, I wanted to delete the drive before sending it in.
So, I decided to try to erase (or at least corrupt) the data by placing a big magnet over it overnight (the magnet was an old Rockford Fosgate Power 10" subwoofer). Then I ran the drive in a degaussing coil for a while. Hopefully this will at least corrupt the data enough to make it unaccessable from a casual read attempt.
SO here's mny question: Is there any way anyone knows of to delete harddrive data in a similar situation?
BTW: I did try everything under the sun to isolate the problem. The BIOS simply won't recognize the drive and it also causes any other drives on the same cable to not be recognized too. Cables, jumpers, and all combonations of configurations did not help. And yes, the IDE controller is fine because it's attached to a drive right now. Also, the 120GB drive didn't work on 2 other PCs I tried.
Anyway, Newegg RMA'd it easy enough, but I had data on it. I really think the controller on the drive was bad (smelled the all-too-familiar smell of burning silicon) so chances are the data on the platters was still there. Seeing as I have some sensitive data on there, I wanted to delete the drive before sending it in.
So, I decided to try to erase (or at least corrupt) the data by placing a big magnet over it overnight (the magnet was an old Rockford Fosgate Power 10" subwoofer). Then I ran the drive in a degaussing coil for a while. Hopefully this will at least corrupt the data enough to make it unaccessable from a casual read attempt.
SO here's mny question: Is there any way anyone knows of to delete harddrive data in a similar situation?
BTW: I did try everything under the sun to isolate the problem. The BIOS simply won't recognize the drive and it also causes any other drives on the same cable to not be recognized too. Cables, jumpers, and all combonations of configurations did not help. And yes, the IDE controller is fine because it's attached to a drive right now. Also, the 120GB drive didn't work on 2 other PCs I tried.