Need Advice! - Hard Drive Destruction

Hello All,

I process large quantities of complete Hard Drives (HDDs) and need the fastest possible form of destruction that does not involve shredding or completely bending the drives.

I basically need a process with a cycle time of less than 10 seconds that leaves the controller board in decent shape but renders the hard drive useless. I have seen all of these machines that you can buy but all of them are too slow or don't do what I need them to do. I have also tried basic drill presses, but they overheat quickly.

Using a large hammer is possible, but I want an easier process than that...

Does anyone have a hydraulic press or another method to do this??

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

is removing the controller board first an option?

No, not really.

We need a very streamlined operation that takes the minimal amount of time to do that...removing the boards would be time consuming. I may have too much wishful thinking of doing it in less than 10 seconds, but I feel there is some method out there....

I saw one once that was used by a company who got computers from companies
for destruction it was a big magnet which rendered the harddrive
non-useable and destroyed any info that might be on them
It looked like he built it but it worked.

bmackay said:

I basically need a process with a cycle time of less than 10 seconds that leaves the controller board in decent shape but renders the hard drive useless.

Click to expand...

Thats easy......a strong degausser(electromagnet).It rearanges the bytes(0's and 1's) in such a manner that the hard drive is completely unusable afterwards.It only takes a few seconds,and you could build/buy one relatively inexpensively.Plus you can destroy countless drives at once,simply by moving the degausser over a pile of drives,that is,if it is strong enough.It is a non-destructive way to destroy a lot of HDD's fast.
You can use a TV degausser,or a very strong (non electric) magnet,but best case scenario you will only erase the information,you will not render the disks unusable.

Here you go. A $100.00 35 ton punch press in action!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLESiPjy3Mg

I would l think that you could modify that into quite the planchet punch. Make some dies to stamp your own silver or gold rounds. :|

That is one heck of a machine! I could think of many uses for that around here.
Unfortunately in his first post,he stated he was looking for a method that did not completely bend the drives.
But back to that machine,did you build it?If so I would love to know how.I would love to have one of those around!

silversaddle - that is an amazing machine...where did you get a press like that??! I feel that even though that is a super quick way of complete destruction, we may be able to modify a very similar machine to do what we need for destruction.

mic - I have read a lot into degaussing hard drives but I am not sure that just degaussing meets all of the standards that US legislation demands. We have neodymium magnets around that have a pulling force of 250+ pounds, but is that enough alone?


This info helps me a lot...thanks!

bmackay said:

We have neodymium magnets around that have a pulling force of 250+ pounds, but is that enough alone?

Click to expand...

No that would not be enough,or at least I wouldn't feel comfortable with it.
There are degaussers specially made for destroying HDD's.

mic said:

bmackay said:

We have neodymium magnets around that have a pulling force of 250+ pounds, but is that enough alone?

Click to expand...

No that would not be enough,or at least I wouldn't feel comfortable with it.
There are degaussers specially made for destroying HDD's.

Click to expand...

I guess I should have phrased that a bit better...will degaussing in general be enough to ensure that there will be no data recovery??

I'm pretty sure degaussing does make disks unoperable or should I say unrecoverable. We have one here and its used when we plan to never ever ever ever use something again. This opposed to just overwriting. I work for a DOD facility.

Some info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Degaussing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Feasibility_of_recovering_overwritten_data

kind of my line of thinking - if you use a application-specific "known" device "certified" to completely wipe, have it documented by the mfr as such, have iso9001 procedures documented, as well as the training & certification of employees on those procedures; perhaps do random sampling every XX & document it, you should be covered - insurance & DOD-wise, I would imagine.

or, you could shoot them with a 12ga slug. 8)

The punch press was bought from a local machine shop for $100.00. It's nothing fancy, just a 35 ton mechanical press. This press is also used to stamp out sterling silver conchos and spots for parade saddles. We have a whole collection of dies to make all different types of conchos.

We prefer to crush the drives as to degauss them as the shielding on some of the newer drives is hard to defeat. Also, if you watch the video, you can see that you can still remove the controller boards after the drive is crushed. In fact, most the time the board will only have one or two screws left in it.

We can adjust the press to crush the drive even more if we wanted, but this seems to be more than enough.

As far as safe, well as you can see if you get your fingers in the strike zone, your gonna have nubs. But it's just about as safe as any other piece of equipment if you use your head when running it.

As far as production speed. With my son handing stacks of drives arranged in the right direction, we can crush about 20-30 drives a minute without pushing it. Makes a little mess but it's all good! :lol:

Hi Flora , how are tricks?
I hope your well!

Flora27 said:

This info are very useful for us,hard drives require data erased first because if it falls in the wrong hands they might risk data breach. Most of the time, their solution is to delete all the important folders, empty the recycle bin, or format the data before throwing it away.Thanks for your info.keep it up!

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I could be wrong but I've been under the impression that any data simply erased or deleted can be recovered with certain software , and is often done so often by law enforcement agencies.
I'm sure that the only way to truly destroy data stored on a HDD is by the methods mentioned above , either by degausing or by the mechanical destruction of the platter.
I preffer to use a hammer , it makes noise :lol:
All the best and kind regards ,
Chris :mrgreen:

( Edit to add , when destroying hard drive platters with a hammer , wear saftey goggles! Not all are aluminium , some are made of glass and these shed very nasty shards! )

Flora is just a spammer.

Hi chief , how are tricks?
Hope your well! :mrgreen:

jimdoc said:

Flora is just a spammer.

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Gotcha' , 8)
All the best for now and kind regards ,
Chris

Hello,


What is some good software to wipe a hard drive when the Feds come knocking quickly?

lont1963 said:

Hello,


What is some good software to wipe a hard drive when the Feds come knocking quickly?

Click to expand...

Small amount of C-4 ought to do it for you.

Since you asked, the feds are knocking on your door in...

5...

4...

3...

2...

1...

:mrgreen:

Göran