On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:43:19 -0700, whirled peas
wrote:

Spehro Pefhany wrote:
On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:41:24 -0400, WangoTango
wrote:

Once it has confidential info on it, I NEVER willingly allow a hard
drive to leave my control. Period. I still have at least one 40M
drive in locked storage (that's 40M, not 40G!).


It may be just a rumor, but I've heard an acceptable military option is
to fire a .45 slug or two through the drive, case and all.

That sounds hopelessly optimistic for any modern HDD and really
sensitive data (though it would certainly stop the most common kind of
snooper). Most of the surface of the disk will be intact and MOST of
the data could be recovered. Even an intact chunk a few mm in size
could contain a lot of data because the surface density of data is so
high.

I think a cement kiln or maybe a hammer mill with a small enough sieve
would be more effective and probably safer.

Even media that once contained top secret data is still considered top
secret after being 'sanitized'.

http://www.dsd.gov.au/_lib/pdf_doc/i...08_unclass.pdf