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| Thread ID: 30666 | 2003-02-27 06:02:00 | Secure Destruction of a hard drive? | PoWa (203) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 124377 | 2003-02-28 02:59:00 | The US military preocedure to dispose of hard disk drives containing "classified" data was to drive a tracked vehicle over them, then burn them. (This was in the 60s and 70s, and the drives were big enough (fridge size or bigger) to be flattened. I suspect that modern 3.5" drives would just be pressed into the ground). ;-) . Burroughs, while they didn't mind selling replacement disk drives, were also taxpayers, so they suggested that there might be cheaper ways. The standard which was accepted was based on overwriting all sectors with "random" data 7 times. You could do this without a programme (whether it costs thousands or tens of dollars.) A two line script would do it in *nix. It depends how paranoid you are. If your secrets are so valuable (or embarrassing) that you want absolute destruction of the data, you must be such a good target that the information will have been in the hands of the black hats long ago. :D |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 124378 | 2003-02-28 03:10:00 | Until the '90s you just needed a heavy truck to drive PAST the hard drive, within about 20 feet, and the drive would crash. Driving over it seems pretty unnecessary. I remember "acclimatising" disks for 48hours in the computer room before we turned them on. robo. |
robo (205) | ||
| 124379 | 2003-02-28 03:25:00 | i still stand by my method, high temp incineration. Even better if you have a alkyne (alkanes should do - propane, butane) tank (C2nH2n) with blow torch which can reach heats in excess of 1500 degrees. Simply aim at hdd and ignite. The job should be done in about a minute and if you really want you can keep the molten metal as a orniment. |
Dylan (800) | ||
| 124380 | 2003-02-28 03:35:00 | Why is everybody going away from what PoWa really wanted answered? It's turned into a place for people who like burning/smashing/running over/posting to Iraq/electrocuting to share their ideas . I also think that you (PoWa) can't possibly have any information on your hard drive which is so valuable, so important, and so confidential that you need to make sure people won't try to find it (with an electron microscope!!!) . Just do a few low-level formats (from the BIOS), FDISK it a few times, format it a few times, and you should be fine . |
somebody (208) | ||
| 124381 | 2003-02-28 03:36:00 | Just another idea for people to try: If you really want to have the pleasure of destroying the drive physically, take it down to your local Clay-Target shooting range, fire the drive with their machine, and shoot at it till your heart's content with your favourite gun. |
somebody (208) | ||
| 124382 | 2003-02-28 03:43:00 | The real problem John, was your paranoia. It blinded you to the ultimate futility of your quest, and the more obdurate you became, the more posts were put up taking the mickey out of you. We are a pretty friendly lot here on F1 and we like to have fun once in a while. Not only that, there was always a chance that you would tell us what the big secret was. It was entertaining while it lasted. It is really quite ironic that you are now going to use a system that will still leave traces of your data available to forensic detection by electron microscopes etc. or maybe we've been had :O but either way it brightened up a quiet Friday and I hope you don't take any of this personally. :8| Cheers Billy 8-{) :D |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 124383 | 2003-02-28 03:43:00 | somebody: your (non-firearm) suggestions won't do it. FDISK alters less than one sector. "low level formats" are no better than normal writes. ("fast" formats, probably the default these days, don't write anything). | Graham L (2) | ||
| 124384 | 2003-02-28 04:40:00 | > it brightened up a quiet Friday Wasn't it a Thursday evening? |
agent (30) | ||
| 124385 | 2003-02-28 10:07:00 | Just a few points: 1. Once you have erased everything, how will you be absolutely sure that all traces have really gone? I'll bet you will always have that nagging doubt, is it really all gone. ?:| 2. One day your hard drive will fail. :-( When that happens, the postings in this column will give you plenty of options on how to destroy it, so that you can finally have peace of mind in case all was not totally erased the first time. 3. In the meantime, until you have erased all, it would pay you to review your personal security situation, as computers do get stolen during burglaries these days. Imagine how you would feel. :-( Cheers. :) |
exLL (515) | ||
| 124386 | 2003-03-01 02:29:00 | With Partition Magic (Im using 7), you can rerase a partition 'securely', and it means you cannot perform an un-delete. Try doing that a few times, by putting the HDD in as a secondary drive! |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
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