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The 'Three Ton' Hard Drive Destroyer

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the because-you-can dept.

Barence writes "Last year, PC Pro welcomed a DIY-style hard-disk destroyer into its Labs to wreak havoc on some unsuspecting platters. Now the technology has moved on, with the Ideal 0101 — a device that pierces disks with between 2.5 and 3 tons of force. 'It's not the quick cut-and-shut process you'd assume it is,' says PC Pro's reviewer. 'Instead, the 0101 seems to enjoy its particular method of torture.The punch emerges from the side of the bay, slowing piercing its way through metal, silicon and glass, before retreating once the disk is destroyed.'" I attached a video clip.

8 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. recycling by walshy007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    anyone else manually dismantle the things and remove the magnets because they're decently strong?

    1. Re:recycling by Abstrackt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I use them as fridge magnets. I've even made a few clocks with the platters, it's a fun project to teach the kids that just because something is useless for its original purpose it doesn't mean you can't use it for something else.

      --
      They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
    2. Re:recycling by vlm · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've given the platters to my girl fiend as purse mirrors. I also keep one in my car for when people have their high beams on behind me. Not sure why, but the surface is a near perfect mirror. And since it's not really deformable (brittle, not elastic) the image is always near perfect. Minus the hole in the center.

      If you can toss them correctly they also fly rather well, requires you to snap the wrist.

      I just don't see how this destroys 'everything'. A small hole like than in only a portion of the disk will still leave quite a bit of data.

      There is a certain cutoff year where most of the pre-whatever drives are aluminum platter and the post-whatever drives are glass platter. Everyone whom does what we do, eventually has the "shattering" experience of discovering their first glass platter hard drive. And being precision ground surfaces they can't be prestressed like car windows, they leave some very nasty sharp jagged chunks of glass. Keep the 1st aid kit handy...

      The large old aluminum ones (think 5.25 or bigger) also rang with a clang you cannot believe if dropped on a tile floor. Deafening, almost. Don't try with the glass platters.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  2. Kind of silly. by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A drill press works faster and is a lot cheaper. granted it does not have bright green lights and a lot of over-engineering, but hey.

    Can they make it do some laser effects and add a smoke machine so it looks really cool?

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Kind of silly. by EdZ · · Score: 3, Informative

      Even cheaper, but not as fast, is the ATA SECURE ERASE command. Wipes your data even better than DD (because it erases 'bad' sectors from the G-list too), and is built into pretty much every HDD manufactured in the last 6-10 years.

      The myth about '32 erase cycles' and similar nonsense about reading data with an AFM is pure bollocks, and has been since the introduction of MR (and later GMR, CMR and TMR) head drives nearly 20 years ago (15 for non-IBM drives).

  3. This is how we do it.. Shredder! by Pontiac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OK folks.. this is how the government gets it done.
    An industrial metal shredder. Nothing left bigger then a dime.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_O7-rqcHc

    --
    If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
  4. i think we should put old disk drives on rockets by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Funny

    not to destroy them, but to send them out into space, in a random trajectory, like voyager 1. 300 centuries hence, our distant children, or aliens, can find them, decipher them, and find all about the wonders of cookies, porn spam, twitpics, and excel 2003, among other digital detritus of our lives

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  5. Re:Force? by vlm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm pretty sure they mean pressure not force, since I honestly doubt that a 2.5 'ton' of force is needed to punch through a hard disk

    No they almost certainly mean force. Shop presses are sold by force. 1000 psi hydraulic tubing, fittings, pump, and o-rings vs some diameter (area is what actually matters) ram equals X tons. The shop press manufacturer has no idea what shape die you'll install. If its a wedge, I guess the area is theoretically zero at the point and the pressure is infinite. More likely limited by the compression strength of the metal in the die.

    Here's a Harbor Freight Chinese 20 ton press, less than $300 delivered.

    http://www.harborfreight.com/20-ton-shop-press-32879.html

    Chinese presses used to be famous for shipping with cast iron plates instead of steel plates. People die or are horribly wounded when the cast iron inevitably shatters. So be careful and/or buy or make your own steel plates. Another thing to look out for is Chinese "1000 psi" fittings and hoses might not actually survive 1000 psi when brand new, much less after years of abuse. So buying a press 10 times bigger than you think you need is not all that bad of an idea, assuming you can afford it.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger