Comments on: Drive Slagging

By: carlsonmark

carlsonmark — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:58:16 +0000

Anybody who wants hack-a-day "classic", change your bookmark to:
http://www.hackaday.com/category/daily/

Or for the rss feed:
http://www.hackaday.com/category/daily/rss.xml

Yeah, I know it's not fun to have to change your personal habits, but it's way easier than trying to get hackaday to change.

By: Johnmc

Johnmc — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:07:57 +0000

Man what a waste. They should have done a little tear down first. Like there are some kick ass magnets in there.

By: Cross_

Cross_ — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:51:50 +0000

Slow news day, huh ?

By: Nick H

Nick H — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:39:34 +0000

Having destroyed many hard drives in the past few weeks, I agree that overkill is fun, but not always necessary.

All the boogie-man-exotic techniques (MFM, MSTM, etc) would rely on the attacker being able to access many areas of the platter with a device that effectively have a "depth of field" (a bit of a misnomer, but an apt analogy) on the order of nanometers. If the platter is flat and undamaged, it's feasable to mount the thing for easy analysis.

Beat the platter a few times, and it's too warped to effectively scan. And in my experience, many modern drives still use solid platters. IBM/Hitachi seems to be the main exception. If the platter isn't solid, it'll shatter... even better.

An even better idea though: use Darkik's Boot & Nuke (or similar) with a DoD-style wipe, and give the drive to a local charity. Organizations that reuse computers are often short on suitable hard drives due to paranoid nerds. Wipe/donate is even acceptable for many financial institutions.

By: HeBD

HeBD — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:11:57 +0000

wtf!!! dont do that! thats destroying evidence. any idea how long u can be locked away for that without even having done anything _else_ wrong? omg!! just dont do it!!!!! sell it to someone who can use it!!!

By: killasmurf

killasmurf — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:56:09 +0000

Hack?

By: herbicide

herbicide — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:47:30 +0000

I just use them as mirrors or coasters.
Well, the aluminium ones also make nice first-surface mirrors, for playing^W experimenting with lasers.

By: fartface

fartface — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:19:11 +0000

Um platters are today not solid metal. You can shatter them quite easy.

a sledge hammer to a hard drive is incredibly effective. nail it a few times and then shake out the pieces and throw them away randomly.

By: Man On Fire

Man On Fire — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:08:38 +0000

thermite in a flower pot is more fun.

By: barry99705

barry99705 — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:00:52 +0000

It’s still cool though, after reading my comment, it came out wrong. Any mixture of heat and metal hot enough to turn the metal liquid is cool.

By: barry99705

barry99705 — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:59:16 +0000

Mehh, been there done that. http://web.mac.com/barrywoods/Site/DOD_drive_wipe.html

By: Hal Hockersmith

Hal Hockersmith — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:14:41 +0000

In the olden days we just used thermite. Not as fun but hella fast.

Oh and jaun: good try at redeeming yourself. The post is good (i'll let this one slide) but it not up to the old hardware hacks. Try finding more things to the hardware side. (And yes if _I_ find any I will tip you off to it.)