Destroying hard drive

[Rapmaster]

Question--

How effective is it to use a drill press to drill a couple of holes through a dead hard drive that may contain sensitive information. Many of us at work have stacks of them on our desks due to a bad batch of PCs Could information still be retrieved?

Comments?

Software wiping utilities are useless because the drives are physically defective. I know about degaussing but I'm interested in comparing this to drilling.

[Atmelflash]

If you crack a platter close to the spindle.. It's all over but the screaming. A heavy hammer right in the middle of the disk and it would never come back. A disk would have to spin in complete revolutions in order for forensic software on it.

[Nix]

Blow torch.

[ecrosson]

I like to hit mine with a hammer to insure its total destruction. Seems to be really effective too.

[brewster]

you guys must have important, private info my pc is open for whatever
no secrets here

[Vernon Frazee]

Like this:



And that's after being overwritten with 0's.

[P3-450]

Hmm, had a bad day Vernon

[Vernon Frazee]

Yep, yet another failing (or dead) Quantum. This one belonged to my wife. Fortunately I was able to retrieve 99.9% of the data before it gave up the ghost.

It started developing a 'bad spot' here and there a couple of weeks or so ago. Then a few days ago, when six new ones appeared in a single day, I knew it was on its last leg. (It was 4+ years old).

Anyway, she's up and running on a new Maxtor 80GB. Used Partition Magic's DriveCopy 4.0 to do the copying from one to the other. Worked like a champ.

BTW, I *-always-* physically destroy any hard drive that I replace, mine or a customer's. It takes less than a minute and it's not worth the risk not to do so. Besides, it makes me feel better.

[P3-450]

ill have to keep it mind, luckily i have not had a reason absolutly destroy a drive, but once i do im give it a try, besides it sound fun

[SuperSparks]

For sure, physical destruction like that is the only way to make sure that the data can never be recovered. Here's an interesting article:

Disk Sanitization

[Rapmaster]

Thanks for the feedback. Yep these drives could potentially contain sensitive information (it's a government agency). Apparently at higher levels of sensitivity, the policy is that drives are destroyed and the pieces get locked up in a vault for 10+ years. Wow