[l008com]

For years, many tech guys (myself included) have always told customers, that if they really want to destroy their data, they should just smash their old hard drive with a hammer. This usually comes up after a hard drive upgrade, when they want to know what to do with the old drive. Just bash em to death.

Well recently I went through my hard drive bin. This is a very large rubbermaid container filled with hard drive, all kinds, all sizes, years and years worth. I scoured every drive for old files, then i zeroed them all. And of course, I had a stack that were too damaged to access. So if I can't zero them, I might as well destroy them.

Fast forward a few months later, and I go out back and get to business. You can do it on dirt, the drive just digs in. So I put them on a patio brick. It quickly destroyed the patio brick. So then I put it on a cinder block. It very quickly destroyed the cinder block. I had NO idea how durable these things are. Thankfully I didn't start on my walkway, it would have shattered it.

So no more telling my customers to smash old drive with hammers. I went through my stack, and took the tops off. Then I removed the individual silicon discs from each drive. Then I put them all back together, and put the empty cases in my computer recycling box. And the discs....
they will end up at the bottom of the ocean. I figure salt water will do wonders for my bits. Not any time soon though, my boat is wrapped up for the winter. It will have to be next spring.

[olePigeon]

Have any SCSI drives your'e getting rid of?

[Cold Warrior]

Homemade thermite.

[l008com]

Thermite would be fun. But I do think my method is "easier" :-)

And yeah there are some old SCSI drives in this box. Most are very small. Measured in MB not GB. I think some of these platters came from SCSI drives.

[olePigeon]

I have a few old Macs and I'm always on the lookout for cheap SCSI drives. Anything bigger than 250MBs.

[l008com]

I've got some centris 610 / pmac 6100's in the closet too. Although one has an ATX pc installed in it. From back in the day when Kazaa was PC only

[olePigeon]

I have a boxed LC with Presto 040 card, with a boxed 14" Apple monitor for it.
Also have a Mac IIci, Takky Color Classic, unmodified Color Classic, and Quadra 605. I'm on the lookout for a IIfx, Quadra 950, and a PowerMac 6150 WGS. Got the boxed LC on Craigslist, had to drive 2.5 hours to Santa Rosa to pick it up, but it was worth it.

Oh, forgot about my IIgs and the IIe card that's in my Quadra.

[l008com]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

I have a boxed LC with Presto 040 card, with a boxed 14" Apple monitor for it.
Also have a Mac IIci, Takky Color Classic, unmodified Color Classic, and Quadra 605. I'm on the lookout for a IIfx, Quadra 950, and a PowerMac 6150 WGS. Got the boxed LC on Craigslist, had to drive 2.5 hours to Santa Rosa to pick it up, but it was worth it.

Oh, forgot about my IIgs and the IIe card that's in my Quadra.

Oh I think I have a Quadra 700 around somehwere too. That machine was my first router, first server, and first machine that ever hosted What's My IP Address? Networking Tools & More.

[mattyb]

Magnets do a pretty good job. Need to leave them for a while though.

[l008com]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

Magnets do a pretty good job. Need to leave them for a while though.

I actually did that too. When the hammering wasn't really working at all, I put the drives back in a box, and I put my giant welding magnet in there too. And it was together for a few month. But still, I think putting the patters scattered around the bottom of the ocean is the best way to go. Ill probably put them in the anchor zone too, so most likely, eventually, they'll get a gigantic ship anchor smashed onto them

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by l008com 

I actually did that too. When the hammering wasn't really working at all, I put the drives back in a box, and I put my giant welding magnet in there too. And it was together for a few month. But still, I think putting the patters scattered around the bottom of the ocean is the best way to go. Ill probably put them in the anchor zone too, so most likely, eventually, they'll get a gigantic ship anchor smashed onto them

In 10,000 years, stick-men-like aliens will find your disks and you'll have to put up with a Haley Joel Osmet robot.

[l008com]

I'm hoping the salt water will have the same effect on my discs, that it has on all the chrome and brass on my boat In which case, there will be no data to find.

Somewhere I found a chart that showed how many miles offshore you have to be to dump various types of material overboard. I wish I could find that again though. I think metals are 5 miles but I'm not sure.

[olePigeon]

You could run them through an MRI.

[bstone]

Good idea on the MRI. *kaboom*

[olePigeon]

Nah, you'll just have to wait a few weeks before you can pull the platters off as it depolarizes.

[andi*pandi]

Surely they can be recycled somewhere and not dumped in the ocean?

[Person Man]

Use one of these babies.

[boy8cookie]

why so secretious?

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

Magnets do a pretty good job. Need to leave them for a while though.

[ghporter]

Using a magnet on an entire, fully assembled hard drive is hard to get to work. The "really serious ones" are basically a scrap yard's magnetic crane magnet, and typically the drives are exposed for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. I'm told that the drives actually stick to the magnet and fall off when it's turned off.

For permanent destruction of data, the shredder is the easiest, safest and quickest option. There is no way to reassemble the platters of a drive to recover the data after the whole drive is shredded. By contrast, DoD requirements for hard drive sanitization (clearing and wiping to prevent all but the highest level laboratory data recovery) call for overwriting the ENTIRE drive with "a character, its complement, then a random character and verify." This method works well, but is time consuming and in practice a drive that is sanitized in this manner is generally just reissued for use with data of the same level of classification. This method is not authorized for media that held Top Secret information-you simply destroy such drives.

[SSharon]

I take my old hard drives apart and keep the magnets for fun and use the platters on my wife's candlesticks to catch wax. They are very reflective so they look nice there and I don't have a boat to take them offshore.

[brassplayersrock²]

SSharon, I'll remember that candle stick thing.. Thank you

[olePigeon]

Use a metal saw and turn the platters into ninja stars.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

I believe "doth" is singular, not plural.

(pet peeve)

[Phileas]

True that. Doth is a singular form of the present tense of do.

[The Final Dakar]

[Phileas]

Hey, Oisin wasn't doing his job. Somebody had to.

[The Final Dakar]

What? My post had nothing to do with yours.

[Phileas]

So now it's my fault if your posts are universally applicable? Sheesh.

That's how my wife argues.

[l008com]

Two things...

One, I WISH i had one of those mega-shredders, that's crazy.

Two, I had a great idea. I could get some kind of rubber-edged wheel and put it on a power drill. And use it to shoot these discs like a gun But in the end, I'd still collect them all and put them at the bottom of the ocean.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

So now it's my fault if your posts are universally applicable? Sheesh.

Read the thread title, look at the pic.

I'm almost embarrassed I didn't come up with this earlier.

[sek929]

From now on make your visual puns a little earlier please.

[The Final Dakar]

Deadlines need to be sent earlier, boss.

[olePigeon]

You didn't get the TPS report?

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Read the thread title, look at the pic.

You missed the white.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

You missed the white.

Godammit!
pwned