How can I wipe a broken hard disk drive before sending it back to the manufacturer for maintenance?

The hard drive of my laptop died, the manufacturer wants me to send it so that they can investigate, but I'm concerned that the drive might contain sensitive information.

When I say the drive is broken, the drive won't be recognized by my OS (meaning I can't use standard tools to wipe it) and I keep hearing clicking noises.

Is there something I can do to wipe the data without further damaging the hard drive?

The hard diskdrive is a standard drive, not a SSD.

Do not return the drive if it contains customer or legally protected personal data.

For what it is worth, you may find that if you explain the situation to the support rep they will waive the return and let you destroy the dead drive.

HP have done this for me in the past.

Just tell them that you don't want to return the drive because of sensitive data, and you prefer to physically destroy it. The probable reason they want the dead drive is to make sure it really is dead and you aren't just trying to blag a free one. As long as they believe you they will probably let you keep it.

If they insist, then if your data is important and/or legally protected (most business data is), just take the hit on the cost of the drive.

For completeness, there's always demagnetizing. Look for degaussers. You can also get a bunch of magnets and hope that scrambles enough of your data.

NSA approved degaussing wands appear to run about $500 - $600.

There are some vague forum reports of buying very strong neodymium magnets and using those to degauss the drive by rubbing it on both sides:

I got the idea of using a permanent magnet to erase the drive but I read many postings of people who tried but failed using old speaker magnets. I then found a site called K&J Magnetics (http://www.kjmagnetics.com/) which sells super strong neodymium rare earth magnets.

I did some experiments on an extra working drive. The neodymium magnets fully erased a hard drive with less then 30 sec of rubbing in circles on both sides of the drives. They also worked great to erase 3-1/2" floppy disks and some flash memory cards.

Just be careful to read and heed the warnings about the magnets on K&J's site. The magnets are much stronger than you could imagine. Getting your finger caught between two magnets will cause a serious pinch. Also they are incredibly hard to get apart once they stuck together.

Looking through the magnet selection, one of the larger neodymium magnets will run you from $5-$20 so that's much more cost effective, if it works. However, according to their own blog, which performed an actual experiment on a live hard drive, this doesn't work at all! Per the comments, this might be because simple magnets don't offer the rapidly oscillating magnetic field that the commercial degaussers do.

So, pending any other experiments, I'd call the cheaper neodymium magnets busted; it's either the $500-$600 degaussing wand, or nothing.

Its very hard to destroy data on a hard drive securely if you can't write to it. You could try downloading Darik's boot and nuke from http://www.dban.org and see if its able to run at all on the drive. You could also check if the manufacturer has a wipe policy on disk arrivals (Seagate does).

If you're particularly paranoid, buy a new drive and stash the old one in a safe until the data is no longer a security problem.

The SATA standard is supposed to have an internal command to wipe the drive. Theoretically if you send the drive erase command to the SATA chipset, it will remain until the drive manages a wipe. If you power the drive up, it will keep trying and nothing but replacement of the entire logic board could stop it.

Look up the Secure erase info at http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml This should work sufficiently since once you push the command to the drive, supposedly you can't stop the command. Whenever power is applied, it keeps trying.

If the hard drive contains data that sensitive, I wouldn't risk returning it; hard drives are inexpensive, and if the confidentiality of the data is worth more to you than the cost of a new hard drive, there's no point in trying to get your existing hard drive repaired.

The other option, of course, is magnets; mechanical hard drives are highly sensitive to magnetic fields, and strong magnets can be obtained in the form of Nd₂Fe₁₄B, or neodymium-iron-boron alloy. Neodymium magnets are found in large quantities as small discs that look like tiny coin cell batteries, and also in high-quality speakers, some screwdrivers, and ... um ... hard drives.

Download a disk erase tool such as Dariks Boot and Nuke (DBAN, free), load it to a CD and boot your laptop from it. If your HDD is still basically functional it'll overwrite the data. If your HDD is physically dead the only way to securely erase is to obliterate the drive, which your manufacturer won't like.

The manufacturer ought to have decent security over this portion of their operations: They don't want people's information being harvest and publicly broadcasted any more than you do. If the disk is non-functional and cannot be overwritten, the odds are you're OK sending it back to them.

I'm a fan of reporting rattling when I need to return a drive... then wrap it i n a towel and plastic bag and hit it with a hammer ln the top of the case. I try to do just enough damage to make the platters useless without it being intentionally damaged. Three to five whacks (not too heavy) seems to be just right.

Get Yourself an old style VHS tape demagnetiser I have an old tandy one I purchased years ago. Apply alternating magnetic field to it for a while all round the disk and then the flat smash trick should be more than adequate for data destruction. Or am I wrong?

If it's a laptop drive you can take it out in your hand and hit it flat over your desk (make sure to hit it directly flat to not cause any dents). After couple of hits most likely platters will go and become total mess (you can hear them being in pieces). Then you send back the drive. We were doing that as low-cost solution in our workplace where we had to send out few drives per month to HP, Fujitsu-Siemens, and Maxdata. They took them in. We had only once complains about it but we were doing it non-stop so they knew it's all on purpose. As long as you hit the drive flat keeping it in hand you shouldn't break the case but only platters inside.