PhiBer wrote: |
In my opinion, its not worth the effort to try and destroy them yourself. Use a local monitored recycling and data destruction service to have the job done for you. |
PhiBer wrote: |
You can also encrypt the entire drive with something like TrueCrypt 5.0 (which implements entire system encryption) prior to drive destruction and lose the key! |
CArmstrong wrote: |
Some of the drives don't work properly but the data is still recoverable by those expert companies, so any software solutions won't work. |
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That may be a good solution, depending on the threat level and whether or not they're willing to trust the data destruction company. |
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Even if the drives were fully functional, if the data is really very valuable, software methods alone will not suffice (cf. Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory). |
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The recovery of at least one or two layers of overwritten data isn't too hard to perform by reading the signal from the analog head electronics with a high-quality digital sampling oscilloscope, downloading the sampled waveform to a PC, and analysing it in software to recover the previously recorded signal. What the software does is generate an "ideal" read signal and subtract it from what was actually read, leaving as the difference the remnant of the previous signal. Since the analog circuitry in a commercial hard drive is nowhere near the quality of the circuitry in the oscilloscope used to sample the signal, the ability exists to recover a lot of extra information which isn't exploited by the hard drive electronics (although with newer channel coding techniques such as PRML (explained further on) which require extensive amounts of signal processing, the use of simple tools such as an oscilloscope to directly recover the data is no longer possible). |
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To completely eliminate any magnetic properties the platter material had, a phase transition (e.g. from solid to liquid) is required. Heating the platters to a specific temperature called the Curie point should suffice, but exactly which temperature is required will depend on the materials used. Actually melting the platters is easier to verify and will achieve the same purpose. Hard disk platters normally use aluminum as their substrate; it shouldn't be too hard to reach the melting point using tools such as a welding torch or an appropriate furnace. See http://driveslag.eecue.com for an illustrated example. |
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