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I'm seeking advice on how to handle a faulty hard drive that I need to return to Amazon.

There are many articles suggesting ways to wipe or physically destroy a drive, but these options aren't viable in my case. The drive is malfunctioning, so I can't wipe it or overwrite the data. However, I also can't destroy the drive because I need to send it back to Amazon for a refund.

The data on the drive mainly consists of personal photos, so it's not highly sensitive. Nonetheless, I'd like to take steps to make it more difficult for someone to recover these photos. I'm uncertain about Amazon's procedures for handling faulty hard drives, and I'm concerned that if the drive falls into the wrong hands, someone might attempt to extract the data.

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    You can’t, if the drive is malfunctioning to such a point you can’t perform a simple wipe operation to delete the partition table your at the mercy of the fact anyone trying to access the drive would have the same limitations. Which is why FDE is so important
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 9 at 12:39
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    If you have recovered any data you need, then quick-format the drive and find software that may wipe it. Or even use Linux dd if=/dev/zero ... to write as far into it as possible, maybe a seek (with dd) will allow to write beyond any damaged regions. It won't "help" the receiver analyze the disk itself, but your data will at least not be as easily accessible as reading files. NOTE: Deleting files == mark the file as deleted in the "table of content" - the actual data is NOT "wiped".
    – Hannu
    Commented Feb 9 at 16:31
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    Today's drives are pretty well immune to external magnetic fields, but if you have a bulk magnetic tape eraser, you could try a few passes over both sides. A very powerful rare-earth magnet might be as effective. In either case, though, if the data is just personal, not financial, there is little risk someone would try to recover it from a truly dead drive. Check in another machine that it is truly dead, though.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Feb 9 at 17:06

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