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Ten Ways To Destroy a Hard Disk

Posted by samzenpus on from the ten-is-better-than-one dept.

Barence writes "Following his blog last week about the homemade hard disk destroyer, Bustadrive, Mike Jennings was deluged with comments from readers, both on the blog and here on Slashdot. Most seemed to like the product, but also offered up far more innovative and madcap methods of hard disk destruction, with a wide range of implements used — household and otherwise. In this follow-up post, he rounds up the best of an imaginative bunch of hard disk destruction methods."

7 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. How about: Write zeros to the disk? by impaledsunset · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Write zeros. Once. Problem solved. Then you can sell the disk.

    Physical destruction is only necessary if the disk is already broken, and you can't erase it properly.

    1. Re:How about: Write zeros to the disk? by zero0ne · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Citation?

      I don't think there is a single legitimate source that has proved this is possible.

    2. Re:How about: Write zeros to the disk? by gandhi_2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Using this logic, all hard drives are capable of infinite capacity.

      --
      THL phish sticks
    3. Re:How about: Write zeros to the disk? by Anonymusing · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe YOU can, with your handy electron microscope, but mine is still on layaway.

      Also, suppose you were trying to recover a specific file from my disk, and you had to use an electron microscope to recover every single bit. There are 1,889,785,610,240 bits on my 220gb hard disk. Assuming one-tenth of a second per bit to scan, you'd still spend about 6,000 years reading the drive to collect all the data. Trust me: the value of that data will have long expired by then.

      --
      Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
    4. Re:How about: Write zeros to the disk? by danieltdp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Its like this: one close-range shotgun shot to the head kills a man. Wanna be sure the guy is dead? How many bullets do you have?

      --
      -- dnl
    5. Re:How about: Write zeros to the disk? by number11 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, the chances of two consecutive coin flips landing on the same side are EXACTLY 50%.

      You statistics people think you're so smart.

      But you have failed to account for the cases:
      where the coin lands on edge.
      where the coin rolls, and is lost under the refrigerator.
      where a raven swoops down out of the sky and snags the coin midair and flies away with it.
      where a man jumps out of the closet, grabs the coin, and runs away.
      where when the coin hits, it breaks into two pieces, the microfilm flies out, and the pieces come to rest hollow side up.
      where Annie Oakley shoots from the next room and blasts the coin to smithereens.
      the Creationist case, where God, being extremely bored, miraculously causes the coin to turn into a glass of Guiness, which smashes to the ground and gets beer everywhere.
      And probably other cases.

      Where's your 50% now, eh?

  2. the best way to render a hard drive useless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    install Windows ME