Secure Destruction of HD's

D

Dio

Veteran
Same question, but for hard drives. (Just today another one died: clicky clicky, no reformat).

If I can reformat the suckers I don't care, but I have several that are dead, dead, dead.

My current theory is to take the cover off, remove the platters, and apply a blowtorch to them. While this might be marginally environmentally hazardous, it's not the fumes that burning big piles of CD's would produce.

Any other ideas?
 
I presume you aren't concerned about the NSA or GCHQ.... or are you? :)

How about just using a tape head demagnetiser or a big vice and bend the platters?
 
Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

1. Get a very big, heavy hammer.
2. Batter the living daylights out of duff hard disk.

Not the most technical of solutions but just think of the theraputic value! :p
 
Simon F said:
I presume you aren't concerned about the NSA or GCHQ.... or are you? :)
Click to expand...
Fortunately not (otherwise, I wouldn't consider reformatted drives secure!)

Frankly I'm more frightened of the NDA than the NSA. I do like to be thorough, though.
 
Tape head eraser doesn't work on hard drives, apparently. A bulk hard drive eraser destroys the hard drive in the process (yup, that much magnetism required). I would say just douse it in gasoline and set it on fire and then smash it for good measure.
 
On a serious note look here
]
Degaussing is an acceptable and effective method - however, it is far more appropriate for tape, diskettes, or removable media than it is for fixed hard disk drives.
Click to expand...

Sometimes the best people to ask is those whose job it is to retrieve it. BTW I have used these guys before and they are excellent. [/pimp
 
Dio said:
Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

mushroomcloud.jpg


All this effort just to stop people finding out whether R420 supports FP32, huh? ;)

MuFu.

P.S. Wouldn't putting a huge scratch in each platter (once they've been removed) with a knife/needle be sufficient?
 
I'm just paranoid. Frankly, given the age of some of these drives, it's more likely to be leaking games source than ATI stuff :)
 
Sand the top layer off of the platter with a random orbit sander, data destroyed, or at least the data is now dust on the floor. Or throw the entire drive in a metal shredder. If the drive still spins up open the drive up and put some amount of quartz sand in the drive and reassemble the drive and power it on while shaking the drive, it should be about the worst sound you have ever heard. Or alternatively open the drive up, take the platters out, put the platters in a bag and put in flour or some other finely ground material, mix well and throw the entire mess away. If the platter of the drive are ceramic or glass pound the platters into small pieces.
 
IIRC, the best data mining companies can recover nearly 100% of all data from HDs that have been exposed to ordinary fire, so if you use fire, you will want to at least melt the platters.

Scratching the platters won't necessarily work or destroy a sufficient amount of data, given that modern HDs use lots and lots of ECC. The sand-in-spinning-HD idea may possibly produce enough scratches, though.

If the platters are made of aluminum, caustic soda should dissolve them; if they are made of glass, use a hammer.
 
A very good point that glass-plattered HD's should be pretty easy to destroy :)

(Assuming I can get into the buggers. I found I don't have a starbolt head small enough, it's just a bit too big)
 
You could always punch some random holes with a metal drill (a column drill would be easiest if you have access to one).
 
Dio said:
A very good point that glass-plattered HD's should be pretty easy to destroy :)

(Assuming I can get into the buggers. I found I don't have a starbolt head small enough, it's just a bit too big)
Click to expand...

Uh? If your task is to destroy the drive, why do you bother taking such care opening it up? Drill off the heads of the screws, or better yet, just take a hammer to the top cover or throw the darn thing as hard as you can onto a concrete floor or such.

BAM!

Why even bother opening it up if you want to break glass platters? All that will remain inside after a powerful impact is shrapnel. HOCP had a very telling picture of an IBM drive that had had an "accident", no amount of data recovering would have been able to fix that mess.

Anyway, heating the oven to 300 degrees C and sticking the harddrive in there for a couple hours will demagnetize the platters (I would suggest you remove all synthetic materials first, and beware of any toxic fumes that might be produced). Or why not just beat the darn thing into a small lump of metal with a sledgehammer?
 
You might want to pick up this months PC Format - I was flicking through it and noticed an article on recovering data from HD's and I think it had some on destruction.
 
There is software you can get that erases info on the HD by rewriting 01010101010 etc to the HD in multiple passes. A low level format I believe would also do the trick. (though I am not 100% sure.)

EDIT:Disk wipe is the sort of software you are looking for.
http://www.dtidata.com/products_disk_wipe.asp

EDIT2: :oops: "dead dead dead" implies that they are totally unresponsive.. sorry for that. In which case a very strong magnet layed directly on the plates would do a number on the data. Then....

mushroomcloud.jpg
 
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