On 2007-10-08, Carl McIver wrote:
"Ignoramus17253" wrote in message
...
I had a surprising experience recently. I took a couple of hard drives
and tried to destroy them with a 8 lb sledgehammer. I put a hard drive
on an anvil

http://igor.chudov.com/projects/Weld...de-Mini-Anvil/

Then I hit it with a sledgehammer, expecting part to fly away and to
see the hard drive utterly demolished. But no such thing occurred.

Barely any damage was visible on the drive (though, probably, it would
no longer function). After many more hits, finally, the hard drive was
shoring visible deformation of its frame. I am rather amazed as to how
tough the hard drives are.

i

ISTR the NSA figures that if a disc is in something like 43 or more
pieces, the data is statistically irrecoverable. A nail or rod driven
through the case at the right place seems to do the job. A hammer isn't
necessarily going to break all the discs, especially if just one breaks and
the others bounce around, padded by the head and other bits of glass.

That was a MS windows hard drive, the only useful data was SSH keys.

On my linux box, I keep my secrets in a secure manner.

i