The Homemade Hard Disk Destroyer 497
Barence writes "All businesses have sensitive data they need to destroy when they replace PCs, but disposing of hard disks properly can be an expensive business. This has led one IT manager in the UK to come up with his own, homemade solution — Bustadrive. It uses a powerful 'hydraulic punch' to physically deform a hard disk, rendering it virtually unreadable, and requires nothing more than a pull of the lever on the front — similar to a drinks-can crusher. PC Pro tested the Bustadrive, and also sought the opinions of data destruction companies as to whether the device was really as effective as hoped, or just a fun way to mangle a hard disk or two."
I'll fuck it up good. (Score:1, Interesting)
Zero Challenge (Score:1, Interesting)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/06/189248
Re:Overkill? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd just use my rifle and a few rounds of .308 Winchester (or .303 British, 7.5mm Swiss, 8mm Mauser, whatever). Problem solved...
If you really want to go low tech, a sledgehammer would do fine.
7.62mm holes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Destroy the data, not the drive (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet it takes less time to plug the machine in and boot off a CD than it does to open the case, remove the drive, and then smash it.
Not if you actually let the software RUN, it doesn't. Using DBAN on a 500 GB drive can take days, whereas this solution takes a few minutes at most. Your solution is only practical if you have one hard drive to destroy, and it is attached to a machine. The usual situation is the hard drive died and you replaced it with a good one, now need to make sure the dead one is REALLY dead before you toss it. Or, you have a batch of them that need to go because you're refreshing PCs.
Re:Overkill? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I used to work (~5 years ago), we used an erasure tool that wrote random data over the entire drive (10 times), then introduced the drive to "Mr. Band Saw" in the machine shop, to quarter the platters, on any DoD/DoE stuff
Re:Overkill? (Score:5, Interesting)
A degausser weakens the magnetized regions, but it's still at least theoretically possible to read it if it's not done thoroughly enough. What I don't get is why you don't just take it apart and sand the platters clean. There's zero chance of reading it after that, and it's a lot less energy intensive than actually chunking the platters. Extra credit if you use the disk drive motor to spin the disk so that you can sand it without any actual effort...
Re:The Columbia test (Score:5, Interesting)
That means heating the whole drive for long enough that the platters get hot and not just heating the outside of the thing the drive is in for a few minutes.
Re:Overkill? (Score:2, Interesting)
Which would be the better solution.
A small terracotta pot without a hole in the bottom of it + a small amount of thermite is the cheapest way, thermite is cheap and reasonably easy to make.
Nothing says "no data recovery" like a drive reduced to its elemental components.
Re:Stand drill (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Overkill? (Score:4, Interesting)
For exactly that sort of reason, though, most decent business vendors will(for a little extra, or if you prod the rep) offer an HDD warranty option where you don't have to send back the dead drive in order to receive a replacement, and can destroy it onsite as you wish. Simply giving you the drive back would be useless, since it is more or less impossible to determine whether or not the contents have been duplicated once it is out of your hands.
Re:Overkill? (Score:2, Interesting)
That Gutmann paper is 10 years old - are those attacks still viable? Data density has increased quite a bit, and perpendicular recording has been introduced... does this have any effect other than making recovery a more time-consuming process?
Personally I feel safe doing a single-pass wipe, but don't work for any TLA organizations :)
Re:In the real world, fire is a bad solution (Score:4, Interesting)
We actually use thermite and sledgehammers at my work place to destroy old hard drives.
A stack of 3 of them, a line across the platter area, and a large 20lb sledge to hit them afterwards.
We've had issues in the past with hard drive processing places actually sending them overseas for disposal, but they end up getting recycled and reused.
ARGH! Physical destruction is the wrong answer!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, everyone comes up with these elaborate schemes to physically destroy disks, as a means of destroying data. Let's say this one MORE time: Can your method provide with a consistent, known, and guaranteed level of data destruction?
Consider the terms I used here.
1) Consistent: Is this going to be the same for every drive?
2) Known: How much effort in terms of hours and dollars is required to recover some or all of the data?
3) Guaranteed: Oh, really? Prove it to me!
With a software wipe, you can calculate (and measure) residual magnetism, and also account for 'hidden' areas on the disk (recovery sectors, etc.) With a hardware destruction method, what can you guarantee me?
In fact, the gushing article from PCPro even shows the weaknesses of this method:
"The Bustadrive, then, looks like it'll thwart all but the wealthiest and most determined of hard disk hackers"
Whereas, to the best of anyone's (public) knowledge, a single random overwrite will wipe data beyond any hope of recovery. A pass with DBAN will wipe it completely out, and if you pay for EBAN support, you can even get a certificate guaranteeing the data destruction.
Why are people so determined to destroy disks, rather than data? Even worse, people are eager to PAY for questionable disk destruction methods, rather than just simply destroy the data--what they want gone in the first place.
Re:Overkill? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, not exactly *your* method, using bullets. But the same idea.
As they take each old computer out of service during a government-wide system upgrade, they:
1. Remove the hard drive.
2. Drill through it once, using a cordless drill. Right there in the office!
Full munching and recovery of recyclable materials takes place later at a depot. The important thing is to keep citizens' private data private! It's leaks to the media which drives the paranoia, by the way.
Re:Overkill? (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's a foreign government willing to do a molecular scale image of the entire disk with a scanning tunnelling electron microscope and then have a large team of people painstakingly apply heuristics and get back some small fraction of the stored data in a few years time
Even that is impossible. The first problem is that an electron microscope can even read a drive in the first place. It can't. You need a magnetic reading device of some sort. You can't even read a normal, non-wiped drive with an electron microscope.
The second problem is using the term "small fraction". Unless you mean really, really small, on the level of maybe a few random bytes out of a terabyte drive small, even with the best existing reading/recovery device, one pass zero is sufficient.