I have ~10 HDDs that I’d like to dispose of. For a while, I tended to buy unwarrantied used disks for my NAS, so these have all failed in some form or another over the years. I can’t just toss them, because they have my (unencrypted) data on them, but I can’t wipe them either since they don’t mount anymore. I want a simple and reliable way to render the contents unrecoverable. A nation state is not part of my threat model, but any kind of data reconstruction that could be bought with civilian money is.
I’ve tried:
- Smashing with tools (largely ineffective)
- Punching holes with a drill press (how many holes are needed to ruin the disk? Also I’ve broken/dulled a few bits doing this)
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Open them up with a screwdriver and then either smash the disks inside or continue dissassembling it for fun before destroying the disks.
Open the disks, take the platters out, you can smash them. Or, if you’ve been naughty, you can borrow a belt sander and sand them down to naught.
Fire
Just a simple hole renders them useless. The only method to reconstruct them from there would be any kind of SEM or AFM which would still take weeks to months to years depending on the size/density of the drives.
Even just opening them up and smacking the disks would be sufficient
Next time just encrypt them.
Imma join the disassembly gang. Takes no more than a minute to unscrew and take the top off, then you take a hammer and give it some direct hits. Could additionally take the magnet that’s inside (or an even stronger one) and give the disks a few swoops if you like. (And now you have a free magnet!)
Warrantied drives still fail, they just happen to ship you a replacement.
Commercial drive trashing solutions are basically a smaller, fancier version of the mechanism in a log splitter.
You could probably rig a sketchy drive wedge/bending thing with a pump jack rather easily.
Wear PPE.The odds of someone taking a failed drive and transplanting the platters to a working drive is pretty low to begin with.
Me? I don’t have tons of drives to destroy, so I just unscrew the thing, get the platters out and smash those.
You need bigger tools. An 8+ pound sledge hammer. Just be sure the smashing happens on concrete or any hard flat surface. Hit the area where the platters would be. Should only take 1 - 3 hits a piece. Once you hear sand inside you’re done.
My 30lb sledge delete drives in one hit usually. Turns the platters back into dust lol.
