Best way to physically destroy a drive?

Smash it with a hammer...hit it with both sides just for good measure.

Get the pieces as small as possible then sprinkle them in different locations.

Fire would do the trick also, even though you said short of incinerating it.

Or smash it....take a big dump on it and light it on fire.

 

You got to get at the platters inside to make sure you destroy the data. Using a magnet is worthless. Inside a hard drive is some of the most powerful magnets there already. There fun to play with and you be amazed at there strength. So unscrew the hard drive and rip out the platters then sand them down with a belt sander and crush them into many fine pieces should do it or you can buy a hard drive destroyer machine specially for the job. http://www.garner-products.com/PD-8400.htm

 

Just give it to almost any male of the species Homo Sapiens (or an earlier species in the line, if you can locate one) that is in one of the age-specific stages of destructive development. These roughly correspond to ages 3, 16, and 40. I've alway been partial to explosions and fire; together, separately, or serially.

 

I got a better one

Take it to a foundry or even a chemical plant and either have them use a drop-forge hammer on it or acidtize it and watch it dissolve into molden gunk.

Now what device on earth is going to put that humpty dumpty back together again.

 

maybe you can give it to me via fedex and forget it.

 

I know a guy who actually destroys hard drives with ballistics. Commercially.

 

I actually have strings of 8 platters hanging off the washing line for a light reflecting display and windchime.

Bend them a tiny bit and you get all sorts of cosmological shapes such as halos, nova and stars.

Those niobium magnets that run the seek arm are certainly powerful.

 

Heres another simpler way. Pull the lid and give it to a Welder friend who works in a metal fab shop. Ask him to Tig weld the surface then run it thru the metal heat-treatment furnace. I used to work in one of those foundries, that little platter doesn't stand a chance at recovery especially if the welder uses Stellite.

 

I live in Hawaii, so if you send me your drive I will be happy to drop it into an active volcano for you. Immersion in red hot molten lava is an excellent data disposal technique. By the way, this method can also be used to destroy rings of power, so if you've got any, send them over too!

Alternatively, a more practical approach that will satisfy 99% of your privacy needs would be to give the drive a few really good whacks with a large sledgehammer. Don't stop until you have completely smashed the drive - you need to ensure that all of the platters have been either deformed (if aluminum) or broken (if glass). This will ensure protection against all but the most determined and well-funded adversaries.

However, if you simply MUST completely destroy the drive such that even the NSA and all of its equipment (this is the the modern day equivalent of "all the king's horses and all the king's men") would be unable to retrieve even the tiniest speck of data from a fragment of one of your mangled platters, then I suggest drive shredding. Run a Google search on "hard drive shredder" to learn about the many drive shredding services out there that will happily chop your drive into tiny bits, or, if you are willing to pay extra, even tinier bits. Some will even melt the remains. (I suppose some might even put the remains into an urn for you.)

 

Donate it to a daycare.

 

A lot interesting and even bordering on the absurd to comical suggestions, but i'll share how i destroy my hard drives with everyone. First of all the hard drive has to prove nothing software can correct it's instability or access, if no joy, i simply toss it into the neighborhood dumpster for transport to the local landfill.

 

Generally speaking, the question of how to destroy a hard drive is asked in the context of how to do it fast and in an environment where the use of corrosives, high temperatures, firearms or other extreme measures is unsafe, such as in an aircraft or enclosed bunker.

Some years ago when a US spy plane made an emergency landing on Hainan Island in China (strange place, I have been there) it was reported in the press that the drives were removed and smashed with hammers.

I have tried this myself. It takes a 3 pound hammer to make significant dents in the metal case of a hard drive. Obviously, you want the dents to be deep enough to badly damage the platters inside.

You may wish to note that at the Southern tip of Hainan Island there is a monument proclaiming the spot to be the end of the known civilized world. I suppose they love this in Oz.

 

This would be one of those few situations where smashing the platters isn't good enough. I'm sure the Chinese government has access to the technology needed to retrieve data from bent or shattered platters. (I wonder if the data was also encrypted? My guess is that it wasn't because that would have been too sensible.)

Of course, a lot of top-secret eavesdropping technology was also on board, so the data on the drives might not even have been the main prize.

 

I took mine to a computer recycler and paid them to degauss the drives- It took only a minute.

 

A lump hammer will do a good job. The cases are surprisingly touch to crack open but 5 mins work will do it. Once the platters are bent and scarred it is very hard to think of anyone recovering data unless you are a spy and the CIA are after you.

BTW, why do you need to destroy it? From what I've read, modern disks overwritten with pseudorandom data or the various patterns available on disk wiping apps does the job well enough for all but the most extreme government agency secrets.

Or am I wrong?

Interesting, skeptical article on supposed data recovery methods of secret agencies: http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html

 

apparently Ibas managed to restore a drive that a culprit had drilled holes in, and filled with super glue.
another case, they restored a hard drive that had been on a ship that sank due to burning up

so, only way is to either de-gauss it, or prefferably with thermite

 

There is some research going on using very strong permanent magnets to instantly erase a drive. All of us should remember that data recovery of a drive with even a single pass of pseudo random data will not be attempted unless national security issues are at stake. That single pass will defeat all conventional forensic software. Furthermore, wiping a drive after a civil subpoena is received will result in a default judgment against the owner of the drive, regardless of the content of the drive.

 

You are being inconsistent in your analysis. On one hand you say the Chinese would use their best efforts with magnetic analysis, but on the other the US would not encrypt the data because that is too sensible.

 

If it needs vaporized entirely in short order the only simple solution is just that, pour a solution of Sulphuric Acid on it and watch it dissolve before your very eyes. I think thats alreay been mentioned.

BTW, who would need to go to such extremes anyway here?

 

nobody would need it here.

not even me, but i store my secret chocolate chip cookie recepies on a computer that runs completely off a whirlpool+serpent crypto with the key on a usb stick, thus not booting at all unless the key is in at boot time

 

You're right, and I apologize. My casual comment about the possible lack of encryption in this case really doesn't do the situation justice. Perhaps various other federal and state government agencies might not be in the habit of encrypting their sensitive data, but the U.S. intelligence agencies are very conscious of these matters and they are particularly skilled at all aspects of encryption, whether they are utilizing it for their own benefit or are breaking somebody else's. Irregardless of what I said in my previous post, we can be fairly certain that all sensitive data on board that aircraft was encrypted and that various other technology-guarding measures were in place.

Furthermore, I applaud the decision to land the damaged aircraft on Chinese soil, thus sacrificing its technological secrets, rather than choosing to ditch at sea, thus keeping its secrets but possibly losing the entire crew in the process. This demonstrates that the U.S. valued the lives, knowledge and skills of the crew above the value of its secret eavesdropping technology, and that pretty much underscores what America is supposed to be all about.

I'm sure the decision to land the aircraft on Chinese soil was made easier by the realization that much of the secret technology on board was protected by the use of strong encryption and other defensive measures, and so this may be a case of encryption saving lives.

 

I believe the govt security agencies grind the platters to dust with a special machine. Better drag out the bench grinder and files.

 

Metal Platters: I melt them (Stove top or propane torch).

Glass Platters: I shatter them into tiny pieces.

 

I would give it to a teenager. They manage to mess up any computer in short order

 

The CIA and/or Dick Cheney probably have the best techniques.