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Destroy a Hard Drive...?

R

Rip the Jacker

Diamond Member
I heard that if you beat your hard drive to pieces, burned it, then the data can still be recovered.

Is this true? Has anyone done some research on this?
 
Depends what you mean by "burned it", but unless you melt the platters, there's usually some chance that the data can be recovered. Of course it usually costs anywhere from $$$$$$ to $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. That's my understanding anyway.

Edit: good enough for 99% of people: http://dban.sourceforge.net/ , if that's all you really wanted to know 😉
 
I work in computer recycling - and we deal with a number of sensitive industries. Banks, hospitals, etc. So I get this question all the time.

Download DBAN and run a DoD wipe on it. It's fully compliant with every government regulation and recovery is nearly impossible. The only more effective soft method is a Gutmann wipe, but that is COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE on modern drives. Gutmann wipes were designed for MFM/RLL drives and are incredibly effective. So if you're going to soft-kill it, use a DoD compliant app. Avoid Gutmann.

GDISK is also a popular utility for executing DoD wipes.

If, for some reason, you're EXTREMELY paranoid, there are a number of efficient methods for ensuring your data will be completely unrecoverable. Among these are to accumulate MANY drives, and feed them to an industrial shredder on the finest setting. If you only did one drive, the data could potentially be recoverable, but if you chuck in a few hundred drives at a time, you have a billion 1mm pieces of a hard drive, all mixed together. And most of it isn't even platter.

Another effective method is to just melt the damned thing. It's a less efficient recycling method than gringing it up (because the grindings can be float-seperated, while the melted stuff has to be skimmed). A completely melted drive is going to be 100000% unrecoverable And you can let it re-solidify into a really cool paperweight. If you don't have access to an old steel mill, tossing the drive in a never-again-to-be-used-for-food oven and setting it to 500 should be sufficient to melt the platters (make sure you open the drive to make sure) - but this will not result in unrecoverable data. Expensive-to-recover, yes, but the whole damned platter has to LIQUIFY and slosh around a little before the magnetic patterns have either dissipated or no longer have meaning.

But to answer your question, beating the drive usually only shatters the platters into 2 or 3 pieces, if at all. Burning it actually applies very low heat to the platters. The fire has to rage and stay VERY hot to cause the liquification neccessary for the platters to be destroyed (if the aluminum chassis of the drive is melting, you've got it hot enough)
 
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
I work in computer recycling - and we deal with a number of sensitive industries. Banks, hospitals, etc. So I get this question all the time.

Download DBAN and run a DoD wipe on it. It's fully compliant with every government regulation and recovery is nearly impossible. The only more effective soft method is a Gutmann wipe, but that is COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE on modern drives. Gutmann wipes were designed for MFM/RLL drives and are incredibly effective. So if you're going to soft-kill it, use a DoD compliant app. Avoid Gutmann.

GDISK is also a popular utility for executing DoD wipes.

If, for some reason, you're EXTREMELY paranoid, there are a number of efficient methods for ensuring your data will be completely unrecoverable. Among these are to accumulate MANY drives, and feed them to an industrial shredder on the finest setting. If you only did one drive, the data could potentially be recoverable, but if you chuck in a few hundred drives at a time, you have a billion 1mm pieces of a hard drive, all mixed together. And most of it isn't even platter.

Another effective method is to just melt the damned thing. It's a less efficient recycling method than gringing it up (because the grindings can be float-seperated, while the melted stuff has to be skimmed). A completely melted drive is going to be 100000% unrecoverable And you can let it re-solidify into a really cool paperweight. If you don't have access to an old steel mill, tossing the drive in a never-again-to-be-used-for-food oven and setting it to 500 should be sufficient to melt the platters (make sure you open the drive to make sure) - but this will not result in unrecoverable data. Expensive-to-recover, yes, but the whole damned platter has to LIQUIFY and slosh around a little before the magnetic patterns have either dissipated or no longer have meaning.

But to answer your question, beating the drive usually only shatters the platters into 2 or 3 pieces, if at all. Burning it actually applies very low heat to the platters. The fire has to rage and stay VERY hot to cause the liquification neccessary for the platters to be destroyed (if the aluminum chassis of the drive is melting, you've got it hot enough)
Click to expand...

Bookmarked
 
Originally posted by: EyeMWing
I work in computer recycling - and we deal with a number of sensitive industries. Banks, hospitals, etc. So I get this question all the time.

Download DBAN and run a DoD wipe on it. It's fully compliant with every government regulation and recovery is nearly impossible. The only more effective soft method is a Gutmann wipe, but that is COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE on modern drives. Gutmann wipes were designed for MFM/RLL drives and are incredibly effective. So if you're going to soft-kill it, use a DoD compliant app. Avoid Gutmann.

GDISK is also a popular utility for executing DoD wipes.

If, for some reason, you're EXTREMELY paranoid, there are a number of efficient methods for ensuring your data will be completely unrecoverable. Among these are to accumulate MANY drives, and feed them to an industrial shredder on the finest setting. If you only did one drive, the data could potentially be recoverable, but if you chuck in a few hundred drives at a time, you have a billion 1mm pieces of a hard drive, all mixed together. And most of it isn't even platter.

Another effective method is to just melt the damned thing. It's a less efficient recycling method than gringing it up (because the grindings can be float-seperated, while the melted stuff has to be skimmed). A completely melted drive is going to be 100000% unrecoverable And you can let it re-solidify into a really cool paperweight. If you don't have access to an old steel mill, tossing the drive in a never-again-to-be-used-for-food oven and setting it to 500 should be sufficient to melt the platters (make sure you open the drive to make sure) - but this will not result in unrecoverable data. Expensive-to-recover, yes, but the whole damned platter has to LIQUIFY and slosh around a little before the magnetic patterns have either dissipated or no longer have meaning.

But to answer your question, beating the drive usually only shatters the platters into 2 or 3 pieces, if at all. Burning it actually applies very low heat to the platters. The fire has to rage and stay VERY hot to cause the liquification neccessary for the platters to be destroyed (if the aluminum chassis of the drive is melting, you've got it hot enough)
Click to expand...

Thank you.
 
So. Even after griding it up into a bunch of pieces they can still examine the data on there? how do they examine the data on there?
 
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