Best way to destroy a harddrive's data in about 30 seconds?

[AVAFREAK182]

Put dry ice in a 2 liter bottle. Tape HDD to outer 2 liter bottle. Add water and run.

 

[potato28]

If I was doing shit like that I'd have the HDD's wired with some sort of explosive or thermite. Right now? Microwave and then chuck onto floor.

 

[videogames101]

I'd have a setup where an explosive charge is held above the HDD, and when the kill switch is hit, OR power is lost, whatever is holding it up drops, detonating on contact with hdd.

 

[Number1]

Anybody else reported the OP to the FBI and Dateline NBC?

 

[Colt45]

Keep it simple. Sledgehammer.

 

[Xylitol]

Originally posted by: Jmman

Originally posted by: ed21x
it will spark up and burn in the microwave. The whole HD will be melted within a minute.

That's my vote. Microwave it.......

i'm sure you can't get it out of your computer and stick it in there all under 30 seconds

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: Xylitol

Originally posted by: Jmman

Originally posted by: ed21x
it will spark up and burn in the microwave. The whole HD will be melted within a minute.

That's my vote. Microwave it.......

i'm sure you can't get it out of your computer and stick it in there all under 30 seconds

Sure, just have it sitting on your desk, connected through USB or eSATA.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I think thermite is the best way. Have a magnesium strip ready and light it. Of course, you're PC would probably not like it, or the people living under you.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Microwave is probably the best bet. I think the platters all crack and bubble up kinda like a CD.

Also keep any sensitive data (such as pirated program installers) on a RAID5 array since it's harder to recover from that (raid 0 is even harder due to lack of redundancy). If you are very paranoid encrypt that data too and the key to decrypt it should be on a USB flash drive that's always plugged into the server.

Should an emergency occur you go to the server, pull the usb, immediatly smash it with a hammer, pocket the pieces for now, grab all 3 HDDs (should be removable enclosures, not internal) smash them up quickly with a hammer, wet them, then throw in microwave for 10-20 minutes (or as long as you can till they get to that and tell you to remove it - hopefully they'll be well done within the 30 secs) and let er rip. Take usb key remains from pocket and either throw in microwave with HDDs or put on top of the oven round and set it to max. You want the IC curcuit to be vaporized by the time you're done.

You will damage you microwave, your oven will be a pita to clean, and the house will smell for the next month. But I can't see why this would not work. 😛

If they DO somehow recover from those HDDs even after the microwave, they need to recover from at least two, AND rebuild the raid, AND crack the encryption. Good luck.

 

[Fayd]

would a thermite reaction make it through the top layer of the HDD into the innards of the HDD?

edit: the real question. does thermite supply its own oxygen?

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Mungla
Keep your data stored on a portable drive or something similar in nature using flash (solid state) memory. It doesn't take much to smash a small flash drive to a million pieces. Good luck recovering that.

I agree. You can get a 32GB usb flash drive for pretty cheap these days. A hammer would destroy all data with no chance of recovery.

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: Cabages
I once talked to a guy that worked on recovering data from "dead" hardrives for the government.

Now I know what question I should have asked!

But he did say there wasnt too much stuff that would completely make the data unreadable.

Was his name Pinocchio?

 

[Pheran]

There don't seem to be many creative software solutions here. In this scenario, physical destruction takes too long. My suggestion (if you must store data at all) would be to keep the entire hard drive encrypted with 256-bit AES. On one small portion of the drive would be the encryption key, which is also encrypted with a passphrase so that you can unlock it. Keep a script handy that overwrites the portion of the drive containing the decryption key with random patterns and zeros about 100 times. It would be a very small piece of data, so the key wipe would take very little time to run.

 

[her209]

Ramdisk FTW!

 

[olds]

My platters are made out of C4 and the read head is a detonator.

 

[Red Squirrel]

They can still crack the encryption though, we are talking FBI. Encryption will help in addition to physical destruction, but software stuff alone wont be enough.

 

[Synomenon]

Nuke it from orbit.

 

[Pheran]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
They can still crack the encryption though, we are talking FBI. Encryption will help in addition to physical destruction, but software stuff alone wont be enough.

This is not the movies, and the FBI is not magic. While I have no doubt that the FBI and NSA have some impressive forensics capabilities, cracking AES-256 by brute force is beyond the capability of the total computing power on earth.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Who says they even use brute force? They probably have some other way like pattern recognition or something. I recall reading that they can crack any SSL data in seconds. That means your banking and other https stuff.

Also the fact that they have it is a danger on it's own as from that point, even if it does take years, it will get cracked.

Though realisticly speaking they probably wont bother going too far as they can catch someone else in least time by continuing their door to door search. But if they specifically want your data then yeah you want to ensure even the encrypted data itself is not readable.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
Who says they even use brute force? They probably have some other way like pattern recognition or something. I recall reading that they can crack any SSL data in seconds. That means your banking and other https stuff.

Also the fact that they have it is a danger on it's own as from that point, even if it does take years, it will get cracked.

Though realisticly speaking they probably wont bother going too far as they can catch someone else in least time by continuing their door to door search. But if they specifically want your data then yeah you want to ensure even the encrypted data itself is not readable.

There is no known way to crack 256 bit AES, period.

 

[Locut0s]

Yeah I'd say microwave. But that's assuming you can get it out of the case in 30 seconds! Gasoline and a match WTF maybe?

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: Fayd
would a thermite reaction make it through the top layer of the HDD into the innards of the HDD?

edit: the real question. does thermite supply its own oxygen?

probably. thermite burns at about 1500C, and does supply its own oxygen (Fe2O3 + 2Al --> 2Fe + AL2O3)

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
Who says they even use brute force? They probably have some other way like pattern recognition or something. I recall reading that they can crack any SSL data in seconds. That means your banking and other https stuff.

Also the fact that they have it is a danger on it's own as from that point, even if it does take years, it will get cracked.

Though realisticly speaking they probably wont bother going too far as they can catch someone else in least time by continuing their door to door search. But if they specifically want your data then yeah you want to ensure even the encrypted data itself is not readable.

There is no known way to crack 256 bit AES, period.

... By the general public. We don't know what the FBI/goverment knows.

Now your right chances are they can't either, but you can't assume that either, don't take the chances.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Pheran
There don't seem to be many creative software solutions here. In this scenario, physical destruction takes too long. My suggestion (if you must store data at all) would be to keep the entire hard drive encrypted with 256-bit AES. On one small portion of the drive would be the encryption key, which is also encrypted with a passphrase so that you can unlock it. Keep a script handy that overwrites the portion of the drive containing the decryption key with random patterns and zeros about 100 times. It would be a very small piece of data, so the key wipe would take very little time to run.

:thumbsup: There's a good one.

Originally posted by: oldsmoboat
My platters are made out of C4 and the read head is a detonator.

That's even better...but I hope your cat doesn't chew through the power cord.😉

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
There is no known way to crack 256 bit AES, period.

... By the general public. We don't know what the FBI/goverment knows.

Now your right chances are they can't either, but you can't assume that either, don't take the chances.

Like Pheran said, the FBI isn't magic. There is no good reason to think they have a crack for AES. I tend not to believe in things for which there is not a shred of evidence.