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What's the best way to physically destroy a hd?

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Seriously though, there is only 1 way to truly make the data on a hard drive disappear: Goats. Those fuckers will eat anything.
 
Thermite is the best option. Unless you want to use DBAN. But you did say physical.

Believe me, the FBI can recover from smashed hard drives.

ebay sells the components for thermite. But with the plane scare crap I bet ebay forbids the selling of it. Thing is all TSA needs to do is forbid lighters and matches on planes. Is that not banned already?

There are other ways though...
 
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There are lots of flavors of thermite, but there's an effective one that's essentially a mix of aluminum powder and iron rust powder. You wont need ebay or a black site for that. I wont give any exact recipe, you can figure that out on your own.
 
John Connor said:
Thermite is the best option. Unless you want to use DBAN. But you did say physical.

Believe me, the FBI can recover from smashed hard drives.

ebay sells the components for thermite. But with the plane scare crap I bet ebay forbids the selling of it. Thing is all TSA needs to do is forbid lighters and matches on planes. Is that not banned already?

There are other ways though...
Click to expand...

Would actually be quite easy to take out anything with thermite. It's so easy to make compared to other comparable destructive forces. You could pretty much make a thermite "bomb", send it to a predefined location using a drone and have it activate. For example you could send it on the roof of the NSA headquarters, if you happen to know where very critical building infrastructure or important people are, you send it there.

All this anti terrorism bullcrap wont stop people who are determined.
 
The most destructive yet commonly available tool might be a cutting torch. Failing that, a severe beating with an 8 pound sledge might make data recovery pretty difficult.
 
just open it up and expose the platters to a magnetic field. i'd be interested to see how well the magnets within the hdd itself can destroy data on the platter.

also, throw the platters in a furnace above the curie temperature. gg.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Would actually be quite easy to take out anything with thermite. It's so easy to make compared to other comparable destructive forces. You could pretty much make a thermite "bomb", send it to a predefined location using a drone and have it activate. For example you could send it on the roof of the NSA headquarters, if you happen to know where very critical building infrastructure or important people are, you send it there.

All this anti terrorism bullcrap wont stop people who are determined.
Click to expand...


Thermite doesn't blow up.
 
crashtech said:
The most destructive yet commonly available tool might be a cutting torch. Failing that, a severe beating with an 8 pound sledge might make data recovery pretty difficult.
Click to expand...


Now that's an option! 10 points for a good post! MAPP gas and oxygen.

A hard drive degausser is an option, but the damn things are $500 minimum.
 
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John Connor said:
Thermite doesn't blow up.
Click to expand...

That's why I put bomb in quotes. It's going to burn a hole right through the roof and destroy anything in it's path so still pretty destructive. You could also land it on the main power transformer of the building you want to attack, as well as their backup generator.
 
Not to hard to combine things like explosives, napalm, and thermite.

This thread is being tracked by the gubberment.
 
crashtech said:
The most destructive yet commonly available tool might be a cutting torch. Failing that, a severe beating with an 8 pound sledge might make data recovery pretty difficult.
Click to expand...
A torch is the method that I would use because I know a couple of people with the equipment. I could hand a guy $5 or $10 and say 'melt this please'.

Buying thermite or its components sounds like it would draw unwanted attention if you're trying to avoid the gubment.
 
I usually open the drive up, scratch up the platters good, and just chuck it super high up in the sky a couple times, then smash it some more with a hammer. Think thats good lol
 
If the drive is functional, DBAN wiping works well. It can take anywhere from half a day to several days, depending on the size and the health of the drive and how crazy you get with the algorithm used and number of passes. You need a spare computer to run it, as it will tie that computer up for a long time, but you just set it and forget it, then check the progress once or twice a day.

If the drive isn't functioning, DBAN is futile. The drive may not even be recognized by the OS, or it may write so slowly that it could take weeks to finish.

To _physically_ destroy a drive, a drill works quickly and easily, without having to open the drive. Doing it on a drill press is easiest, but a hand held drill works just about as well.
 
I had a conversation like this on a bus once...
A few months later some people came to talk to me about it, I was like "lol to late!"
Then I told them I was just talking about a video game and they were like "Oh O.K."

True story.
 
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