How To Safely Destroy A Hard Drive


	How To Safely Destroy A Hard Drive

ryguy999

3-16-2008 3:38 PM

263 views

tags:

hard drive, metal, melt

ryguy999 says:

I came across this website from StumbleUpon and thought it would be interesting to share. This is the fun (and safe) way to destroy a hard drive.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/5ca42949-95c8-493e-ad94-4b2f1d98fb63/E603FAF6-048F-42D2-933F-41AE0A4CC378/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://eecue.com/log_archive/eecue-log-254-Drive_Slagging_Featured_In_LISA__04_Presentation.html" href="http://eecue.com/log_archive/eecue-log-254-Drive_Slagging_Featured_In_LISA__04_Presentation.html" style="font-size: 11px;">eecue.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://eecue.com/log_archive/eecue-log-254-Drive_Slagging_Featured_In_LISA__04_Presentation.html"><DIV>
We started by putting the drives into a steel crucible:  <IMG alt="drive in crucible" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25199-drives_in_the_crucible.jpg" /></DIV>

Next <A href="http://driveslag.eecue.com/mailto:chs@23.org">CHS</A> fired up <A href="http://driveslag.eecue.com/mailto:arclight@23.org">Arclight's</A> furnace and adjusted the flame for proper heat dispersion:
<IMG alt="turning up the heat" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25209-really_hot.jpg" />

Then he inserted the crucible into the furnace:
<IMG alt="putting the hard drives into the furnace" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25211-in_go_the_drives.jpg" />

After a few minutes we noticed toxic smoke rising from the furnace vent and decided to take a look inside.  
<IMG alt="flame and smoke rising from the fire" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25216-flame_and_toxic_smoke.jpg" />

We realized we should have removed the PCBs from the drives first... oh well:
<IMG alt="burning pcbs" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25219-green_flames_are_good.jpg" />

Pretty soon the only solids left in the crucible were the steel caps that enclose the case:
<IMG alt="glowing steel" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25224-steel_and_magnets.jpg" />
<IMG alt="chs and glowing steel" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25222-chs_holds_the_steel.jpg" />

Once we removed those we saw that the woven fiberglass inside the PCBs still remained:
<IMG alt="no more data" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25235-cruft.jpg" />

We then poured the molten aluminum into out ingot cast:
<IMG alt="pouring a liquid hard drive" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25230-hot_aluminum.jpg" />

Good luck recovering data from this:
<IMG alt="hard drive ingots" src="http://eecue.com/img/images_pic-medium-25233-ex_drives.jpg" />

Our prognosis:  drive slagging is a fool-proof method to prevent data recovery.</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/E603FAF6-048F-42D2-933F-41AE0A4CC378/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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