Destroying Hard Drives
- Thread starter Trekker4747
- Start date
Google: file shredder.
It's a free desktop application which will accomplish same thing as the physical mayhem although perhaps without the fun.
All you need is to simply write zeros to every bit on the drive surface in a single pass. The application can do much more but all the data-recovery professionals say it isn't needed. These are the people who can recover files off a hard drive in a computer that was burned in a fire. The laboratories of the CIA, NSA or FBI might be able to recover some data but those agencies probably don't care if you are watching videos of monkeys fucking.
It's a free desktop application which will accomplish same thing as the physical mayhem although perhaps without the fun.
All you need is to simply write zeros to every bit on the drive surface in a single pass. The application can do much more but all the data-recovery professionals say it isn't needed. These are the people who can recover files off a hard drive in a computer that was burned in a fire. The laboratories of the CIA, NSA or FBI might be able to recover some data but those agencies probably don't care if you are watching videos of monkeys fucking.
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I'm considering the hard-drives sufficently destroyed. Short of FBI or CIA agents getting a hold of them I think any efforts to recover any meaningful data on them would, IMHO, be lauded as I went to town on those mother-fuckers and I had fun.
Don't under estimate what they can do.
Seagate recovered data from a drive that had been about the Columbia when she broke up.
I don't under-estimate what can be done.
I do doubt that the theoretical identity theft rooting through the garbage would find the two-three platters that belonged to the same hard drive and then have the equipment and tools necessary to recover any data on it, and any data they do find is not likely to be critical to the security of my parents' identities. I simply destroyed the hard drives as a precaution and in part for fun.
I was hoping for less smashing and more melting, but no one seems to have gone that route. I'm sure the Aluminum could be made into something useful.
People would be amazed at the procedures required by the DoD for destroying computer storage media based on the type of data stored/processed. Data extraction was very much an art/science during the Cold War.
Sure, after it's smashed to tiny bits.I was hoping for less smashing and more melting, but no one seems to have gone that route. I'm sure the Aluminum could be made into something useful.
