Ten Ways To Destroy a Hard Disk

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."

Comments

Spot Welder?

[eldavojohn]

The average welding torch, meanwhile, is a fully paid-up member of the "life-threatening but enormously enjoyable" club - and there's no denying that a 3,000-degree flame would reduce the average hard disk platter to a pool of reflective liquid quicker than you could say "data protection". It's a superb suggestion from Steve, who also put forward the angle grinder for consideration. We're worried about him.

A not as messy method might be a spot welder. They go by different names but my dad's shop used to have a nice adjustable Miller spot welder that would function great for sheet metal work. Anyway, I can envision a homemade spot welder (very trivial to make) with a stand around it and two wooden 2' by 2' pieces of plywood with a handle grip sticking up and two hard drive holes counter sunk with a quarter inch lip to hold each drive (for 3.5" and 2.5" drives). Place the hard drive in the selected hole and clamp your spot welder on it and go to town. Mark your initials in it and you should have a pretty solid drive with no mess, no metal shreds laying around, no flying debris or sparks and probably easier to store/recycle/transport. Man, I wish I didn't live in the city and had a wood and metal machine shop.

Leverage the spinning platters to your advantage

[bugg]

Everyone knows drives are most vulnerable when the heads are engaged, and the spinning platters should cause a single destructive action to potentially spread to the entire circumference. Why not do a write operation to the entire disk and hit it with a hammer during the write? Do that properly and the heads should go flying off in pieces into the platters, and the platters spinning with the loose head material should ensure nothing survives.

Re:How about: Write zeros to the disk?

[gobbligook]

Not too sure about this one anymore. Back in the day certainly.

Become a plumber

[lttlordfault]

After reading the parent article, one thing I noticed was that welding torches and angle grinders seem to create a sense of well being within your average geek. I have to say, as a plumber who also has a keen interest in all things technological, there's nothing more satisfying than breaking into something with either a blow torch, angle grinder or a drill. I love my job, that I have to use these tools every day gives me great satisfaction and makes me feel like a real man :D

When going through higher education I was originally aiming for a career in IT but half way through decided I didn't really fancy sitting at a desk all day. Becoming a plumber has definitely been the best decision I ever made, I get to work with really cool tools every day, plus I'm at the top of my profession having started plumbing about 6 years ago. I'm one of only 3 people qualified at my level in Mid Wales, and so am in incredible demand. I mainly work on servicing/maintenance on commercial/industrial heating and ventilation systems and see some incredibly cool tech every day. Sorry to brag, but as a self confessed geek, I have to say, plumbing is freaking awesome!

Kinda off topic, sorry about that. I don't often have any connection with anything posted on /. but like to read about it anyway.

Sometimes the hammer has drawbacks

[Erbo]

I had some old hard disks I needed to destroy a while back, so I thought I'd just open up the cases and then pound the platters into submission with a hammer. I did this on the kitchen floor.

Unfortunately, the first drive I opened was an old IBM DeskStar. I had forgotten what DeskStar drive platters were made of...

One swing and I had to call a halt to the whole operation while I swept a metric buttload of treacherous fragments of shattered glass up off my kitchen floor.

I conducted the rest of the destruction outside, near the Dumpster.