Burning hard drives in the fireplace

[sdowney717]

I have some old IDE drives
13gb
2gb
5gb
maybe 5 or so. Most still work.
I figure they are worthless except for recycling the aluminum.
So was thinking of burning them in the fireplace in a roaring fire to wipe out any thing on them and see what happens.

[kaldor]

If sensitive data is a concern, just use a Dban live CD to run a few passes. Then, sledgehammer :P

[1clue]

If you're talking about recycling, burnt metal sells for less than non-burnt. I know, it doesn't make sense because it was hot when they made the part right?. But they figure if there's sign of a fire there are probably some chemical reactions or something, not sure what.

I like to take old drives apart. It's kinda cool looking at the high tech in there, I remember getting some old mainframe drives years back that had platters over a foot across. I wound up using several parts for RC modeling and other things in the garage. The disk had a nearly frictionless bearing, never seen one before or since.

And then you take the platters, which are made of glass anyway, and sledgehammer those. And the chassis is aluminum and the screws are stainless, so if you disassembled it you have pure metals to work with, no circuit boards and no carcinogens to breathe in.

[philinux]

I have some old IDE drives
13gb
2gb
5gb
maybe 5 or so. Most still work.
I figure they are worthless except for recycling the aluminum.
So was thinking of burning them in the fireplace in a roaring fire to wipe out any thing on them and see what happens.

Garage floor > lump hammer a few times. > chuck in recycle bin for small electricals.

Simples.

[sdowney717]

And then you take the platters, which are made of glass anyway, and sledgehammer those. And the chassis is aluminum and the screws are stainless, so if you disassembled it you have pure metals to work with, no circuit boards and no carcinogens to breathe in.

Well I dont know what is more fun, burning or sledge hammer.

I have burned a lot of unusual things in the fireplace such as turkey carcass, light bulbs (inadvertantly, they dont crack), plastic toys, stuffed pillows, milk jugs (great for starting up fire), leaves, twigs, lumber, metal parts to burn off paint and rust, old electrical toys, pretty much anything except for spray cans and batteries. Smoke goes up and outside. People toss to the curb a lot of btu's.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

less flashy but a powerful magnet would get the job done

[1clue]

From a practical standpoint you need a REALLY big magnet. I've tried this with what I thought was an outrageously huge magnet and still had a bootable disk.

FWIW you have magnetic media in a metal case. I'm not sure the magnetic field can get through. I suck at physics though so don't take my word for it.

[mips]

Remove the magnets and then just bash the platters with a hammer or something.

[Gremlinzzz]

:popcorn:Dban
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwCCim2V_Jw
http://www.dban.org/download

[Warprunner]

How about you give them away to someone who could use them?

Believe me there are many that would take them. Kinda a "Pay it Forward" deal.

:popcorn:

[sdowney717]

How about you give them away to someone who could use them?

Believe me there are many that would take them. Kinda a "Pay it Forward" deal.

:popcorn:

Dont mind that I supposes, but
1, might be something on em.
2, dont want to bother with em much to find out whats on em.
3, why would anyone want old tiny IDE drives, seriously useless?
4, even a flash drive is more useful than one of these.

I can imagine some type of ancient PC and Dos OS using them. or a collector of old hard drives. I still have some real old mfm and rll drives and controllers.

And I have one of the original portables with Intel 8088 chip, made by Compaq with manuals and msdos OS. I kept that cause I thought maybe some day a collector might be interested.

anyone remember Hard on a Card 8 bit plugin drive controllers?

[sdowney717]

The old Compaq I have looks like this.

So is it worth anything?
http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

The old Compaq I have looks like this.

So is it worth anything?
http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html
i would like to reuse that chassis, probably needs some custom mods but still

[Paqman]

Please don't burn electronics, they contain all sorts of toxic stuff that I'm sure you don't want to breathe any more than the rest of us don't want in our atmosphere.

Dispose of them through your local WEEE recycling system.

[KiwiNZ]

If you wish to have HDD's burnt take them to a industrial incinerator where they are done securely and safely. These units have environmental standards to adhere to.

[deadflowr]

I have some old IDE drives
13gb
2gb
5gb
maybe 5 or so. Most still work.
I figure they are worthless except for recycling the aluminum.
So was thinking of burning them in the fireplace in a roaring fire to wipe out any thing on them and see what happens.

Go for it, if you don't mind any residual health issues such as breathing problems or something. Hard drives contain loads of toxic elements. And having a flue open isn't going to prevent any element from jumping into your environment.

On second thought don't, it's probably against the law.

[TOMBSTONEV2]

For fun I usually take a strip of lithium and insert it into the hard drive (Do not attempt this it can be dangerous) than put the hard drive into water.

Another interesting way I have destroyed a hard drive is through the use of thermite. What fun. If it is a glass/ceramic platter you could just smash it. I want to use mercury fulminate on my next hard drive that dies.

[GreenTaurus]

eBay!

If that thing works, I know collectors who would be interested.