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Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Destroy Hard Drives?

Posted by samzenpus on from the burn-it-with-fire dept.

First time accepted submitter THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER writes "I have 10-15 old hard drives I want to trash, some IDE and some SATA. Even if I still had IDE hardware, I don't want to wait several weeks to run DBAN on all of them. I could use a degausser, but they are prohibitively expensive. I could send them to a data destruction firm, but can they be trusted? What's the fastest, cheapest DIY solution?"

3 of 1,016 comments (clear)

  1. Only one way to be sure. by WiglyWorm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Drive slagging. http://eecue.com/c/driveslag

  2. Re:This attitude makes me sick and I'm tired of it by AbRASiON · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://hostjury.com/blog/view/195/the-great-zero-challenge-remains-unaccepted
    http://www.anti-forensics.com/disk-wiping-one-pass-is-enough-part-2-this-time-with-screenshots
    (Key quotes: Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory by Peter Gutmann (35 pass wipe originated from Mr. Gutmann)

    âoeAny modern drive will most likely be a hopeless task, what with ultra-high densities and use of perpendicular recording I donâ(TM)t see how MFM would even get a usable image, and then the use of EPRML will mean that even if you could magically transfer some sort of image into a file, the ability to decode that to recover the original data would be quite challenging.â)
    (Article itself) http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html

  3. Re:oven by WrecklessSandwich · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you don't want to get into pyrotechnics but you have firearms: A .308 will do the trick.

    This. My boss at my old IT job used to go out to a firing range with one of the server guys on their lunch break and shoot old drives with a bunch of different guns. It makes a pretty awesome looking exit wound.