I've tried that in the past.

Normally I drill a 8 mm hole - all the way through the drive where the rotating disks are.
If in doubt: drill more holes.

I have one of these: VANTEC SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter Very handy, particularly for $20.

...Jerry

I'm not looking ro destory the drives, just erase the data.

Thanks for the suggestion, Jerry, but I don't plan on using them again. Will be handing them off to an old friend still using IDE.

Is destory similar to defrag? :~)

Edit: On a more serious note, I think a powerful magnet would destroy some of the electronic components too.

I second Jerry's suggestion.
A second branding of the connector is here, and right now it is only $13.99:
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0285941
Note that just formatting a drive does not erase the data. To do that I use the freeware Eraser that does a good wipe in only one pass.

Thanks musicvid.
Here's the link to Eraser

Mike

Guys, please re-read my OP:

I found several old hard drives

I'm not looking for adapters or software, neither of which will do me any good at this point.

There are degrees of security in erasing a drive. If the drive works a DOD approved erase method will keep ordinary people from recovering the data. An expert forensic group or intelligence agency can still get it due to remaining magnetic data between the tracks.

The next step or if the drive doesn't work, you need to disassemble it to get at the bare platters and completely destroy them mechanically. Research shows that there no magnets strong enough to make the data completely unrecoverable by highly motivated experts with access to the right equipment.

The only way to erase a drive to the point where not even the NSA can recover the data is to heat it up above 400F. Put it in your BBQ for an hour. Best to disassemble it first and just heat the platters. That way you're not putting a bunch of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere by cooking the entire drive. Or contaminating your BBQ. You'll need a collection of really small torx drivers to get it all apart..

Where I live I can build a bonfire outside to do it. I do this once a year. I have a stack of platters in my garage waiting for the next fire.

rocky

"I'm not looking for adapters or software, neither of which will do me any good at this point."

Yes, they will.

Jay,
one of the IDE/Sata to USB adaptors for under $20 as mentioned, will allow you to connect the drive to your computer through the USB port and erase it or re-format it for your friend. I keep one around in case I need to access an old drive archive.
Hope this helps
Ken

You cannot erase a hard drive using an external magnet. I know you don't want to buy an adapter, but they are less than $10 at Meritline. I use one once in awhile and they work. It will let you connect the drive to a USB port, and you can then use whatever secure erase utility you want. Unless you have NSA data on these drives, one pass using any "wipe" utility will be plenty to keep a normal snoop from finding the data.

If I was giving one to a friend I'd just tell them for fdisk it before they used it. If I received a free drive I'd fdisk it anyway.

As mentioned, fdisk does not remove the data from the drive. There are free utilities that can recover practically the whole drive.

The other nice thing about having a USB adapter in your toolkit is that it will also connect to SATA & laptop (i.e. 2.5") drives. It takes about 30 secs to connect virtually any drive you want (without having to open your computer case or mount the drive in an external case).

...Jerry

You have 3 choices:
1) don't let the drive go anywhere and keep it locked up etc.
2) physically destroy the drive and/or platters (acid baths were common for DOD platters)
3) some form of secure erase on the drive that will leave the drive usable but the data safely removed.

If you want to give the drives to someone else, #3 is the only real option and the USB adapter with a secure erase utility is the easiest way to go (but make SURE you are wiping the right drive !!!!! You can suffer serious "HIFD" (Hole In Foot Disease) that way.

Another FREE utility you may want to consider is "CopyWipe" from TerabyteUnlimited -- http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php
There is a bootable DOS version CD ISO available - grab an old machine with no drives in it except a DVD Rom drive, attach the drive to wipe, boot off the CD and you are sure to only get the disk you want to erase :-)

mikey

As mentioned, fdisk does not remove the data from the drive. There are free utilities that can recover practically the whole drive.

But why would a friend want to recover stuff from your old hard drives?

"But why would a friend want to recover stuff from your old hard drives?"

He almost certainly wouldn't. The issue can become that "almost" leaves open a window of suspicion that can cloud a friendship. Making a reasonable effort to erase the data protects both parties.

Consider a scenario where at some time in the future some of Jay's footage turns up somewhere it shouldn't. It might have come from a number of sources, including his friend snooping around.

Bob.

I recently removed about a dozen old drives from service by driving a pickax a few times through their cases and platters. Made a pretty decent mess of them.

Actually, they could recover data from the undamaged portions of the disk. You'd be surprised just what can be read with the right tools :-)

mikey

If your friends computer is that old, you could re-format it using dos - remember dos?
Install the drive, name it, go to dos, format.

Lynn