The Homemade Hard Disk Destroyer

Barence writes "All businesses have sensitive data they need to destroy when they replace PCs, but disposing of hard disks properly can be an expensive business. This has led one IT manager in the UK to come up with his own, homemade solution — Bustadrive. It uses a powerful 'hydraulic punch' to physically deform a hard disk, rendering it virtually unreadable, and requires nothing more than a pull of the lever on the front — similar to a drinks-can crusher. PC Pro tested the Bustadrive, and also sought the opinions of data destruction companies as to whether the device was really as effective as hoped, or just a fun way to mangle a hard disk or two."

Comments

Re:Gutmann was wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Physically overwritten sectors are (almost) certainly unrecoverable. But what about remapped 'bad' sectors? AFAIK these cannot be accessed in any way by software wiping tools, but could be accessed and potentially read by tweaked drive firmware. They might be overwritten if you use the drive's own firmare erase command if it supports this.

In the real world, fire is a bad solution

[name_already_taken]

Which would be the better solution.

A small terracotta pot without a hole in the bottom of it + a small amount of thermite is the cheapest way, thermite is cheap and reasonably easy to make.

Ok, do that in your office and see how many minutes your job lasts once the fire's out.

Even if we did it outside at my place of work, we'd get complaints from the neighbors. A mechanical/hydraulic crusher/bender thing could be made into something that looks like an office appliance.

Nothing says "no data recovery" like a drive reduced to its elemental components.

Except it's not. Burning is generally a process of rapidly combining reactants, not dividing them up. Plus, it's rather environmentally unfriendly - having a cloud of smoke go up is frowned upon in most places these days.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

[drinkypoo]

Reduce - Buy the biggest disks you can afford, they're worth repurposing and you won't have to spend as much on successors or the attendant labor.

Reuse - Repurpose disks for other purposes. Use last years' disks as part of your backup solution. Secure-format them on a low-power machine and put them on eBay.

Recycle - There must be SOMEONE willing to break the drives down and give you back the platters for destruction. There's significant aluminum in some of those drives.

All this crushing, drilling, and shooting of drives is fun. But it's also extremely wasteful. I understand destroying the drives if lives are at stake, but otherwise, stop.