Hard Drive Destruction

[giza]

I visited my parents over the labor day weekend and had some old hard drives to attend to. One of them happened to belong to a relative who is a nurse, and was worried about patient data on the hard drive. So, I had to make sure that the drive could never destroy data again. And why destroy one hard drive when you can destroy four?

Before I show these pics, I'd like to mention that I was playing with power tools. This necessitated me wearing the proper eye protection and, now that I think about it, I really should have worn work boots as well. You probably shouldn't try this at home. I shouldn't have tried it at home, either. :-P

The victims:




First technique:




That didn't work so well, so I decided to make use of gravity instead:




The leopard did it, in the basement, with the power drill:



That drive on the left was a real pain to drill through. It had a good 2mm or so aluminum plate in the back of it which took some serious effort to drill through. I had to stop several times due to the amount of smoke and the fact that the drill bit began to glow red hot.

At this point, I am quite certain that no one will be able to read that patient data. :-)

The full archive, which contains even more pictures, is over here.

Comments

[wolffit.livejournal.com]

At this point, I am quite certain that no one will be able to read that patient data. :-)

Giza, you should know better... You only destroyed the data at the points where you destroyed the media... Other areas of the platters may still be magnetically aligned and readable with the proper instruments. If you really want to wipe the disks, you have to microwave them! ;-)

[nikvulper.livejournal.com]

And to think we just zero-fill them at our hospital, I'm gonna have to bring these ideas up the management chain :)

[zorinlynx.livejournal.com]

I had to toss a few old disks recently and had a simple method of making them unreadable:

Hit them as hard as you possibly can with a large hammer.

The platters shattered in one, and became hopelessly deformed on another.

Perhaps not as fun, but just as if not more violent and thorough.

It's kinda sad that disks under 10GB are pretty much worthless these days. One of the disks I destroyed was several hundred dollars new... for 1.2GB!

-Z

[baconcoyote.livejournal.com]

LOL! Fun times! I've enjoyed taking sledge hammers to hard drives in the past. Destroying computer equipment is fun! *Thinks of the Office Space copier destruction part*

[drakenhart.livejournal.com]

YEAH!!! The gods of chaos and destruction applaude you!! XD

Okay well maybe not, but I do! XD

[jonesybunny.livejournal.com]

Low-level formatting them about four times in a row would work as well, I think. Not sure!

But as some folk mentioned: Neat descruction, but recovery experts could probably get partial data off these drives.

[randomzen.livejournal.com]

I second that proposal.

[giza.livejournal.com]

You have a microwave, right? I'll be at your place after work. ;-)

[tailen.livejournal.com]

I was about to say. I don't know the data density of these harddrives off-paw, but I know that if you grind a CD into tiny crumbs of 1 mm^2, there's still going to be 100Kbits of data readable on each one.
I imagine it'll be a lot more for a hard drive platter.

[tailen.livejournal.com]

I'm all in favor of that!

Last time I had to destroy HDDs it was in a parking lot with a sledgehammer. Lots of fun :)

[tailen.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall some data recovery expert saying recently that one low level format is enough to make recovery nigh-impossible. All those shredding programs that overwrite files 15 times in a row are overkill.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

It is possible with very specific and expensive stuff to determine the magnetic fields that were present before the formatting. It measures the tiny remenant field at the periphery of the new track. Gov has the tech, though I doubt many commercial outfits do.

Me, I prefer the hammer approach myself. All platters are glass nowdays and the data still visible will be nonsense unless one can put all the million shards back together again - something I doubt is possible.

[graysoul.livejournal.com]

Silly kitty, always drill from the TOP. :)
The old aluminum based platters turn neat colors when held over a gas burner (with pliers, ouch!) and you can "fix" the color by dropping it into a bucket of water.
You can sand off the magnetic surface if you're being thorough.
Thermite is fun also.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

Thermite's not good enough for you?

[giza.livejournal.com]

My parents told me right from the start not to use fire.

They recall some of the things I did during my teenage years. :-)

[simbab.livejournal.com]

So this explains what was showing up in my Flickr contacts RSS feed over the weekend. o.o

[sethb.livejournal.com]

The NSA can recover data after all of the other methods posted here.

[giza.livejournal.com]

True that. I was more worried about private individuals (identity thieves) though. I also used PGP on my stuff. :-)

[vesuvius.livejournal.com]

I like micro tools and tinkering. I probably would have taken them apart and let OldFreak use the platters for his art or maybe donate them as shooting targets.

[kellic.livejournal.com]

1. Use DOD criteria tools to erase the data on the drive.
2. Remove the platters. (about half hour to do.)
3. Place a cloth over one of the platters.
4. Take a sledge to it.
5. Collect the bits from all the platters.
6. Place the bits in a BlendTec blender and finish it off.



If someone can get data off of that they deserve a cash payment by you.

[snowhusky01.livejournal.com]

oh man I wish I could have helped you with this XD I could have contributed by HBAR!

http://www.freewebs.com/sharpshooter114/AR-15.JPG

[kellic.livejournal.com]

What no claymore mines? :xP

[tlttlotd.livejournal.com]

That's how we decomission clients' old drives where I work - we take them into the parking lot and use a sledge hammer on them. It seems to work rather well.

[nidonocu.livejournal.com]

Who says privacy isn't fun? :D

[wildw0lf.livejournal.com]

It's always fun to destroy hardware, but for drives that still work, I'd just use bcwipe from www.jetico.com (the free version) or another disk wiping program that meets DOD standards, or find one for the seriously paranoid that uses the Peter Guttman (sp)? standard that does 35 pass wiping. Someone might actually want these old drives as collector items :)