I recently bought a hard drive, and after only a couple weeks it broke completely, to the point where I can't even log in to my computer. I want to mail it back to get a refund, but the problem is, there's some sensitive data on it. And just because I can't use it to log in doesn't mean the data couldn't be recovered. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I don't like the idea of mailing out such valuable data to an unknown destination.
Since I can't even use it to log in, I can't delete this data the normal way. But I also don't want to shatter it to pieces, which will negate the refund.
Is there a way I can wipe the drive or reduce it to a completely non-recoverable state without logging on to a computer with it? I was contemplating just dropping it in water, or maybe using magnets.
Answer
Even though I couldn't log in, I was able to reach the root shell. From there, I ran the Ubuntu shred command which replaced every bit of data with a random bit.
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