How &$%^£*&! hard can it be to securely destroy a hard disc????

[SH]

Whenever I wish to sell on of a hard disc, I *always* do a secure overwrite using a variety of software tools, such as DBAN (Darik's Boot 'n' Nuke)and it gets securely erased to DoD standards..... before it leaves my hands..... So my personal and financial data does not get exploited by ne-er do wells....

I had 2 off 40 GB and 2 off 500 GB hard discs that either had the click of death or was not "present" in the BIOS attached drives autodetection list.

So Using DBAN was clearly out of the question on any of these 4 drives and I could't even sell them on for spares or repair as it still had my digital data on it.

The last time I had to securely destroy a disk, it had glass platters coated in a magnetic metal oxide. They were *easy* to destroy, with a lump hammer!

So today I set to work with these 4 failed drives which are 7,200 rpm versions

Got my battery powered screwdriver and remmoved all the Torx screws including those under the stickers.

PCBs was successfully removed from all 4 drives and tossed into WEEE bin

The metal Lids was also successfully removed after breaking the hermetic seal from all four and tossed into WEEE bin.

The torx screws were removed for the read/write heads on swinging arms and removed..... and tossed into WEEE bin.

Then the spindle annular rings have 6 torx screws, which are successfully removed and tossed into WEEE bin....

I then remove the platters and I end up with 10 platters (3 form two drives and 2 from 2 drives)

I then try and smash them with a hammer. just put a dint into the surface so clearly not glass.

I then get the chop saw out with a metal cutting blade... Blunted the brand new blade.

I then get the HSS drill bit set out and the pillar drill..... The HSS drilsl won't touch it......

Then I the favoured uk.d-i-y nuclear option... a grinder!

I take the platters to my bench grinder..... the grinding wheels are blunted and you can see streaks of metal embedded in the discs from the platters.....

I didn't have a professional grade degausser unit so that was not an option open to me.....

So I think long and hard about what other methods are open to me to securely destroy the platters....

I then fill up the garage sink with water after putting the sink plug in.

I use a pair of mole grips to hold the disc platter by the edge and light my MAPP blowtorch...

I apply the blue flame to platter and then finally manage to melt the platter and watch molten droplets of metal drop off into the sinkful of water...

Rinse and repeat 9 more times....

1 empty bottle of MAPP gas later, the metal granules are now in the WEEE bin!

RESULT!

[Chris Green]

SH [e-mail] wrote: [snip silly attempts to destroy a disk]

Really, why bother. Unless you're a known millionaire then no one cares what's on your hard disks.

[newshound]

I'm currently burning garden waste, old bit of fence etc. in a home made incinerator made from a 200 litre oil drum with assorted air holes, on a little stand to protect the rough bit of lawn. With dry-ish stuff the bottom half gets up to a reasonable red heat in no time. I don't believe you need to dismantle, just pop them on the top of the pile once it has started, and collect the remains in the morning.

[Theo]

People seem to get huge satisfaction out of destroying hard drives, for some reason.

It isn't necessary. As soon as you've opened the lid it's a £1K+++ repair job, and nobody is going to bother with that unless they have a really good reason to spend the money.

Secondly, if the drive is broken so you can't get at it, likely nobody else can either without spending that sort of money on it.

Theo

[GB]

Why bother?

Hit it a few times with a hammer. Break the PCB, and nobody is going to try to resurrect it.

[Robin]

+4 (in a box waiting for next trip to tip)

[John Rumm]

I use one of two methods for this class of drive:

Yup all that, then repurpose the discs as coasters, having roughed up the surface a bit / given them a wipe over with a neodymium magnet.

OR

Skip all the above dissassembly steps, place drive on concrete floor, hit robustly with 14lb sledge several times. That is enough to bend the entire drive, platters and all, so it can't be spun up or read by any conventional method. (Yes there is a fair chance that GCHQ or the NSA might be able to get something back off them, but they are not the folks I am trying to keep out!)

[Tim Streater]

You don't have to melt it. Just make the magnetic surface red-hot. That is enough to destroy all the magnetism and hence the info recorded on teh disk.

[TimW]

Or just lose it somewhere nobody will ever find it. TW

[Mark]

I just remove the lovely and very useful Neodymium Magnets and throw the rest in the recycle bin

-

[Roger Hayter]

Last lot I got rid of I drilled through the platters via the intact drive with a 10mm drill in a drill press. Took about 10sec per drive and it would take government resources to read the damaged platters.

[Paul]

Just bend the platters in a bench vice. Cutting is not necessary.

An MFM (magnetic force microscopy) cannot follow the surface if it isn't flat.

The platters, if bent, will never ever ever be smooth enough at any future date, to be rotating on a spindle. They would smash the heads to hell and back. They have to be flat to an extremely tight tolerance, and once they're bent, no amount of hammering and fussing, will make them flat again.

Just bend them.

The government here, uses a chipper. There is no degausser certified to destroy the bits stored on the platter, so physical destruction is the preferred method, and there is a chipper with hardened blades that they use. And at a guess, with frequent blade/disc changes.

On certain high tech drives (>6TB, with 256MB or larger cache), there is a flash chip which stored the cache data if the power goes off suddenly. For those disks, the flash chip must be shredded (for high security applications). There are also drives which had flash-cache, 8GB of SLC used for caching, and the same recommendation there, the 8GB of SLC should be shredded. Not every PCB is devoid of user data, most are, but there are exceptions. The ones with Flash Cache might have been called "FireCuda".

Paul

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

If you simply cook a drive very hot most magnetic properties are altered so much the data is unreadable. Brian

[Andy Burns]

I think I've got "enough" magnets out of hard drives by now, and though the platters are pretty and shiny, and might make good bird scarers, I don't need them, so I just take a plugging chisel and lump hammer to mash the case into the platters.

[SH]

Thats really quite a very naieve position to take:

1. Many browsers now "offer" to save your name, address, phone numbers and even usernames and passwords for all your web accounts. So its clearly stored somewhere on that disc

1. Your email client will have a PST file containing *all* your emails, email addresses, email contents etc.

2. Online banking, online pensions etc whose web site addresses all in the web browser history at least so its easy to work out who you have a bankign relationship with

1. Your own personal data on that disc like DoB, Nat Ins No, Name and address means a fraudster cam commit fraud in your "name" like loans, credit cards or SIM swap fraud or even empy your bank account(s)

Need I go on?

[RJH]

+1 - one of life's pleasures :-)

[SH]

was that hit the whole intact drive or hit the platters only? Your reply was not clear on that point

[SH]

That won't fly with SWMBO, she will not recognise them as coasters and would throw them in the bin.

The Hard drive is based on arather substantial frame (most likely to be aluminium. I'd rather direct the destructive energy onto the individual platters otherwise, you can;t gaurantee the destructive energy *is* getting through to the platters if you're hitting the entire drive.....

Plus some drives have multiple platters......

[Chris Green]

The one thing that *might* do is suggest there's something worth hiding! :-)

[SH]

Thats really useful info..... That confirms my view that physical destruction *was* the correct way to go.

Duly noted for the future time when I have such a drive, I assume they are hybrid hard drives (HHDs)?