Thread: 5 Ways To Destroy Your Hard Drive

Many of you will probably read this and think
Couple reasons why you'd want to destroy your HDD.
First, to protect yourself, kind of like cutting credit cards.



Another important reason, is if you're either selling the drive or RMAing it to an untrusted company (For this reason only the final method of degaussing the drive will work)

The final reason, is for KICKS :001_tongue:

5 Ways To Destroy Your Hard Drive

Security is a word that seems to be on the tips of everyone’s tongue these days. With so many hackers, trojans, spybots most people are concered about security primarily when connected to the internet. But with rising amounts of ID theft and the ever-present threat of theft, how do you keep your data safe when you aren’t there to protect it?
So if your hard drive has just been borked after some heavy use, or you just want to trash your system and make sure nobody will ever get their dirty hands on your stuff, you need a surefire way of destroying all your data on that little disk! Without further ado, let’s look into how you can totally destroy your hard drive and everything on it!
NB: Kids, do not try this at home!

1. Hydrochloric (Muriatic) Acid Burn
   This stuff is highly toxic, so you have to be fully prepared to use it and wear all the safety equipment of the day (eye goggles, aci-resistant gloves etc). To destroy your hard drive using this method you will need to pour in a measure of Hydrochloric Acid into a glass cylinder that is deep enough to avoid spilling over once the hard drive is inserted. Tie some wire around your hard drive case and lower it into the acid. Let it sit there for a number of hours so that the acid gets all the way inside the casing and can munch away on yor disk. To really get the reaction going, expose the acid to sunlight. Be warned, once the reaction gets going the acid will start bubbling and may spill over onto the floor. So make sure you are well prepared!
2. Burn It With Thermite
   Thermite burns at about 3,000° and is used by the military for thermite grenades, making it an ideal candidate to destroy any hard drive. Once you manage to get your hands on some of this stuff, place about 4 or 5 pounds of it on top of your hard drive. It would be advisable to place the drive on sand so that the surrounding area does not go up in flames. Stand far back and ignite the thermite. Once you are satisfied that the drive has been irreparable destroyed, douse the flames in sand or water.
3. Smash It With A Hammer And Hacksaw
   This way is a little less corrosive or explosive, but it will still destroy your hard drive. It also means that you don’t need to worry about where you’ll get some acid or thermite, just have a look in your garage. First off, take a large hammer and start to whack the hard drive repeatedly until you see plenty of damage. Ideally part will be falling out at this stage, if they aren’t give it a few more solid whacks. Then clamp the hammered hard drive tight with a vice. Now take your hacksaw and start to saw the hard drive into fine strips, making sure to wreck the discs and platters. Once done nobody will get a thing off it.
4. Grind It To Powder
   This is another simple way of totally destroying your hard drive, making it impossible for even the best of data recovery services to recovery a single byte. Take your hard drive and place it into a vice, then clamp securely. This clamp should be attched to a large study workdesk that won’t move. Then take a grinder with a large 60 grit sanding disk and go to work on the hard drive. Your aim should be to reduce the hard drive to a pile of powder, just like something you’d see your mum grinding in a mortar and pestle.
5. Fully Bork It With Magnetic Degaussing
   Finding magnets powerful enough to magnetically degauss your hard drive will be a bit of a challenge, but it is a foolproof way of destroying any and all data on your hard drive. Once you get your magnets together, lay them out on a surface and pass your hard drive over them. Rub them back and forward, left and right, alternating exposure to the magnets.

The basic premise of each method of data destruction is to destroy the disc and the platters, otherwise data can be recovered. When engaging in an act of data destruction, make sure and target these 2 areas.
I haven’t included any software as a lot of these software-based data erasing products will actually leave something behind. If I wanted to destroy my data, what use would that be?
Source

Also, check this out Hard Drive Eraser I've looked into this a few times. If I was doing something hell illegal I'd have one of these suckers set up inside my computer so I could just flick the switch if the feds came knocking.

Probably the best tutorial on T-I. Made me laugh when I realised one of the instructions was smash with a hammer :).

Could add more about thermite. The stuff isn't easy to light. To my knowledge you need a magnesium strip and a blow torch.

I saw a movie in which a hacker was about to have his apartment raided and heard them trying to bang down the door so he quickly ejected all his hardrives and put them in the microwave on full power. How effective would this be at making the data unrecoverable and how long would it take?

LOL Dan.
I could buy about 3-4TB with the price of one of those.
Sounds like much more return =).
If the feds came knockin at my door, I'd stick in UBCD and run DBAN.
Which would erase everything pretty quick.
This tut is best for already destroyed HDD's though.

Kingdon - The microwave would probably break before the platters of the HDD. LOL
No, but that's not the best way. CD's will get trashed pretty quick in a microwave, but not HDD's.
Well it would probably fry the circuit board, and unless someone really wanted to repair it and try to get at your data..

On the subject of HDD's, check this out http://hackedgadgets.com/2006/04/25/...-hard-drive/3/
First video is so sick =D

doesn't matter if your rich =)

damn i used to watch this underground 'hacker' show where they had this fat funny mediteranian or w/e guy (anyway he was an idiot but a hilarious one) and he always did stupid shit. He ended up putting like 6 pounds of thermite in a laptop. It was sweet, Ill edit this with the link to that show.

hoora found a clip of just him blowing it up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hNQ280Zkk4&feature=fvw