How do you swipe a hard drive?

Answer 1

Assuming by wipe out you mean make the data permanently inaccessible, you can:

• electromagnetically degauss the drive, but this should be repeated several times in different orientations to make sure it isn't recoverable using special forensic recovery equipment that can detect the magnetic shadows of the data
• disassemble the drive and shatter the recording platters in tiny pieces wit a hammer
• or probably the best is disassemble the drive and meltthe recording platters! (if you can't get them hot enough to melt, red heat is adequate as this is above the Curie Point at which all magnetism is lost)

Assuming by wipe out you only mean you want the old data effectively unrecoverable but you wish to reuse the hard drive:

• The US DOD requires that hard drives be erased a minimum of 7 times by zeroing the entire disk then overwriting the entire disk with pseudorandom data to completely scramble any magnetic shadows of the data before the disk is reformatted.
• MACOS X provides both the 7 times to meet the DOD requirement and a 35 times for the really paranoid (or those that just have plenty of time to wait when formatting)

Answer 2

You plug it in your USB part. If you have a laptop it would be on the side of your computer either side. For a desk top you would have to be at the long box thing that you put cd's in. Way at the bottom! =) Good Luck