On 17/04/2021 01:36, Rod Speed wrote:


"John Rumm" wrote in message
...
On 16/04/2021 08:54, SH wrote:

Yup all that, then repurpose the discs as coasters, having roughed
up the surface a bit / given them a wipe over with a neodymium magnet.


That won't fly with SWMBO, she will not recognise them as coasters
and would throw them in the bin.



Skip all the above dissassembly steps, place drive on concrete
floor, hit robustly with 14lb sledge several times. That is enough
to bend the entire drive, platters and all, so it can't be spun up
or read by any conventional method.Â* (Yes there is a fair chance
that GCHQ or the NSA might be able to get something back off them,
but they are not the folks I am trying to keep out!)

The Hard drive is based on arather substantial frame (most likely to
be aluminium. I'd rather direct the destructive energy onto the
individual platters otherwise, you can;t gaurantee the destructive
energy *is* getting through to the platters if you're hitting the
entire drive.....

Plus some drives have multiple platters......

All you need to do is bend the thing, there is no way back from bent
platters without serious expenditure.

Makes a lot more sense to use full drive encryption of the
data you care about if you are as paranoid as that fool is.

When the drives were first used, FDE was not aavilable at the time....
:-)

Obviously not so much an issue now with more modern OS's.....


Most use laptops not desktops now and
virtually all laptops do full drive encryption.