If you heat it up in the oven to above it's magnetic point then drop it on the floor or hit it with said hammer you will cause random magnetic domains to form all over it.
An idea I had was to attack the closed drive on the soft side with an angle grinder. If you do it off centre on a tangent it shoulld spin the disc as it cuts and create a nice carbide snowstorm inside the drive. Then cut it in half and I'd like to be in the lab when they tried putting it together.
Cheers,
Paul.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
-----Original Message-----
From: "Victor Churchill" <victorchurchill@???>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 11:29:49
To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List<hampshire@???>
Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Hard disk destruction
2009/1/8 Stephen Rowles <stephen@???>:
>>
>> We've talked in the past about secure data erasure, using things like DBAN
>> which use wiping algorithms approved by the US DoD. The BBC news website
>> is
>> carrying a story today encouraging people to get physical and smash their
>> drives. Now, whilst I can see that putting a hard disk that has come
>> straight from a computer on ebay, or one that has been trivially formatted
>> or had files "erased" is probably a risk, is it really worth getting
>> people
>> to attack their hard drives with hammers? (Never mind the Health & Safety
>> implications!)
>>
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7816446.stm
>>
>
> Maybe I'm ultra paranoid, but I've always gone for a full wipe.. and then
> physically smashed up the disk :)
>
> I remove and destroy the circuit board, then open the drive up and use a
> chisel / hammer to physically mangle the drive platters.
So maybe I'm being the opposite of ultra paranoid (infra paranoid?) -
I keep my disk platters as coasters. They soon collect enough
scratches from tea/coffee mugs that re reading them would be non
trivial.
Of course we have had these discussions before and as I recall one
position was that the only time a disk platter is completely safe is
when it has been reduced to slag in a furnace. And I expect someone
somewhere is working on that. I'm sure that if someone were
sufficiently determined they could recover something from the bag of
"smithereens" - after all, all that hitting a metal disk with a hammer
is doing is bending it rather extremely.
--
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