What is the best way to destroy a laptop so that nothing on it is recoverable? - Asking for a friend obviously

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Boil it. I heard it from my uncle, they had nothing on him after he boiled his ram.

Apparently the protein in semen lodged in the ram's anus separates in the scalding water or something so they couldn't charge him with bestiality.

 

[DisapprovingCorgi]

No matter what you do to it, the authorities can still uncover all of the child porn you harvested, you filthy bastard.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

Have a watch of this, it's probably the most thorough talk on the subject:

tl;dr: thermite

 

[Slav Power]

Take out the hard drive and shove it deep into your asshole, that way the feds won't be able to find your child porn collection.

 

[Soda Soda]

Easiest solution is to hang yourself, then the world has one less pedo to deal with, and you won’t have to face any consciences when they find it.

It’s a win for everyone.

 

[Utilitarian Clit Dick]

I've never understood any elaborate attempts like the ones outlined above. Get a metal garbage can, drum, or other container, elevate it somewhat so it doesn't destroy the ground beneath, then pack it with enough combustible material to ensure a few hours of high energy incineration.

Paedo.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

For modern SSD's, the only thing that would work is fine shredding. Any other method can actually leave data behind. Fine shredding will leave data behind, but in such small pieces, putting it back together is as close to impossible as possible.

For an SSD, you don't need to shred the entire thing, just the chips in it/on it (depending on its physical packaging), which actually contain the data. Chuck those in a Blendtec/Vitamix/etc... high end blender, on a high setting, and you end up with chip confetti.

Obviously, if you have an old school HDD with spinning platters, just sub in "platter(s)" anywhere I said "chip(s)". Same result.

 

[Mr E. Grifter]

People are thinking too hard about this.

Physically damage it, and do so badly. Smash it into little bits. Then place it in your bin, once it reaches landfill there is no way anyone will be able to find it and piece it back together. Overtime it will be damaged and destroyed by weathering, even if they did want to find it. However, landfills are so big this would be an untenable task - finding dead body's on landfill is almost impossible, never mind the specific broken bits of computer equipment that belong to you.

If you are paranoid about someone checking your bins, use public ones.

Either way, this would suffice to prevent anyone recovering it unless they intercepted it in your household waste. If they are doing that, it's probably too late anyway.

 

[The Last Stand]

I saw this question in a movie. Good luck.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

People are thinking too hard about this.

Physically damage it, and do so badly. Smash it into little bits. Then place it in your bin, once it reaches landfill there is no way anyone will be able to find it and piece it back together. Overtime it will be damaged and destroyed by weathering, even if they did want to find it. However, landfills are so big this would be an untenable task - finding dead body's on landfill is almost impossible, never mind the specific broken bits of computer equipment that belong to you.

If you are paranoid about someone checking your bins, use public ones.

Either way, this would suffice to prevent anyone recovering it unless they intercepted it in your household waste. If they are doing that, it's probably too late anyway.

The move I recommend for end-point disposal is to spread it across several garbage bags, with real-non identifying garbage (no reciepts, biological material, or fingerprints on glass) and take those garbage bags and deposit them after dark across several streets (don't skip the street that you live on, that leave what is called a 'negative pattern') in the neighborhood on the night before trash day.

I've learned way too much about this shit because my family glows so hard you could see it from orbit when they all got together. Most of my family are government lapdogs, without exaggeration. Multiple generations, across multiple branches.

 

[Psychotron]

You're going to want to get a disk cloning tool, and upload the ISO to Kiwifarms

 

[Mr E. Grifter]

The move I recommend for end-point disposal is to spread it across several garbage bags, with real-non identifying garbage (no reciepts, biological material, or fingerprints on glass) and take those garbage bags and deposit them after dark across several streets (don't skip the street that you live on, that leave what is called a 'negative pattern') in the neighborhood on the night before trash day.

I've learned way too much about this shit because my family glows so hard you could see it from orbit when they all got together. Most of my family are government lapdogs, without exaggeration. Multiple generations, across multiple branches.

Realistically, if you just use your own trash and take the bins out just as the rubbish collectors arrive you wouldn't even need to do the above.

The only time this would be a risk was if you are already under incredibly intense surveillance, and if that's the case then you're probably fucked anyway. They will be reading this thread and aware of what your next actions could be.

Point is, normal damage can be overcome but only if they can get the hardware - they will not be able to recover it from a landfill. They could intercept it en route, but that's real paranoia shit - which is probably unwarranted unless you're a terrorist or spy or something of that ilk.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

You're going to want to get a disk cloning tool, and upload the ISO to Kiwifarms

It's the only way for us to know which part of the drive to destroy the most.

 

[Knight of the Rope]

The only time this would be a risk was if you are already under incredibly intense surveillance, and if that's the case then you're probably fucked anyway.

/thread

For real OP, just toss it. If you haven't got glowie eyes on you then it literally doesn't matter how intact the drive is when you toss it, because who's going to look on some rando drive they found in a dumpster or landfill?

And on the contrary, if the feds do have you in their sights then you're just straight fucked no matter what. Anything short of physically destroying the hard-drive means they can still get to the data if they're keen enough, and by destroying it you're adding "destruction of evidence" to whatever charges you're worried about (because again, this shit only matters if the feds actually have you in their crosshairs, and if they're watching you then it's already over and they don't even need to know exactly what's on the drive).

 

[Psychotron]

People do look though discarded drives for crypto tho.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

who's going to look on some rando drive they found in a dumpster or landfill?

Oh I'm doing that 100% and I've known plenty of other people doing the same thing. It's like a pre-kiwifarms type of kiwifarms, finding out things about strangers you've never met for entertainment. So many fat swingers thought they deleted their stuff but they just marked it to be overwritten in the future(that's what normal(quick) delete does).

A secure erase is enough to destroy any data and the gusman guide is incredibly outdated. There might be some left in bad sectors that the drive itself won't touch but those are fragments of fragments with no map on how to piece the binary data together and it would take some serious work to get it out. There's one thing people forget about though and I won't tell you what it is.

 

[Knight of the Rope]

People do look though discarded drives for crypto tho.

But @Quintex96 is fine for that though. They won't be able to find any of his crypto in amongst all of the snuff and child porn.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Fuckin' magnets.

 

[Peru oso donas]

Fuckin' magnets.

How do they work?

 

[Kheapathic]

Just repeating, but physical destruction of hard drive is the best option, via fire/shredding. It doesn't take much to get raw thermite components, pile those up and ignite to get rid of your glow problems... maybe.