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A New Technique to Quickly Erase Hard Drives
RockDoctor writes "Stories about 'wiped' hard drives appearing on eBay (and other channels) and being stuffed with personably-identifiable data are legion; rarer are spy planes having to land on enemy territory, but it happened in 2001 to a US spy plane over an un-declared enemy (China, and that's a topic in itself). Dark Reading reports the development of a technique to securely wipe a hard drive in seconds, and which is safe for flying. (The safe for flying criterion rules out things like fun with packing the drives in thermite. Also thermiting the drives may not erase the platters to the standard required, which is moderately interesting itself."
When I need to protect my data from spying eyes I secure a 500m sata cable into the back port and slowly, very carefully; feed the hard drive into the event horizon. Giving it a good yank after a few minutes and reeling it back in.. the drive returns to normal working condition afterwards.
Just use Maxtor harddisk drives, those things destroy themselves all the time!
Seal the HD with a sticker that says reading the content of this HD is prohibited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That will show them! :)
If thermite doesn't do a good job, go one better and make the platters out of thermite. Make the motor axle out of magnesium, add a fuse and you're set.
If the burning is a problem, just make the platters from cheddar cheese, and add a mouse in a cage adjacent to the drive. Open the hatch, and problem is solved.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
And in further news, Georgia Tech scientists have designed a printer with an integral shredder that shreds all output continuously as it is printed.
They have also designed a novel camera which, instead of a digital CCD array, uses a tough, thin strip of polyester polymer coated with a chemical, light-sensitive substrate. Intended for spy applications, if caught the captured images can be destroyed in seconds simply by opening the back of the camera.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Anyone that has watched enough Hollywood movies knows that it is usually enough to shoot a couple of bullets into the monitor to destroy all sensitive data.
You never have to worry about arcane details such as hard drives, magnetic field strength etc etc.
According to the article, yes it is more effective than a hammer.
What about a magnetic hammer?