Article: What does it take to destroy a Hard Disk?

Computer Forum Storage Devices
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PC Pro: Analysis: Features: What does it take to destroy a hard disk?

Does dropping a hard disk from a third floor window or dunking it in a cup of tea mean curtains for your data? Barry Collins visits Ontrack’s data recovery labs to find out

As any IT manager will know, you can corrupt a hard disk just by looking at it the wrong way. So when data recovery specialists, Ontrack, challenged PC Pro to trash a hard drive, with the promise that it could rescue our files, the offer was too good to resist.

We took an already defunct Toshiba 60GB hard disk, which had made an alarming grinding noise before keeling over in a laptop six months ago, and subjected it to yet more punishment. We threw the drive across our office a few times, smacked it squarely on our desktop, and then dunked it into a boiling hot cup of sugary tea for five minutes, before patting it down and sending it off to Ontrack by post - with all the additional bumps and scrapes afforded by the Royal Mail’s ever-delicate postmen.

It’s an interesting read, shame the BBC took destroying their drive a little too far :stuck_out_tongue:

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Considering im currently planning to find a furnace for me to turn any hard drives that i am asked to destroy into molten slag, i might give them a call if i accidentally destroy the wrong drive :stuck_out_tongue:

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BFH, always works for me[ot]Big :swear:ing Hammer[/ot]

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I would be interested to know if they could recover anything after a 45 rounds of DBan

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I’m arriving a bit late here and you’ll have the excuse the possibly stupid suggestion i’m about to make but wouldn’t a big electromagnet scramble the data?

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[QUOTE=Tech]
wouldn’t a big electromagnet scramble the data?
[/QUOTE]
in theory, yes, although personally i’d prefer to see the physical platters of the HDD destroyed, then i would know the data was beyond retrieval

Edit: & a few hard hits with the hammer to the platters

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haha that was a good read. Personally I prefer the traditional method of a big hammer :smiley:

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Well, i guess i can see the stress busting benefits of the hammer aproach but there’s nothing like power tools when you really wanna do some damage :smiley:

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[QUOTE=Tech]
Well, i guess i can see the stress busting benefits of the hammer aproach but there’s nothing like power tools when you really wanna do some damage :smiley:
[/QUOTE]
true, to do real damage an angle grinder or a sthill saw would definatly be your best friends

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I can’t believe i got the same problem as stated in the harddrive above, toshiba 60 gb making a wierd grinding noise ='(
my brother is gonna kill me its not even mine…