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Wednesday April 30, 2008
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Here at PC Magazine, we get a lot of weird stuff in the mail. Just this morning, someone sent me a package with stink-free sweat socks and a box of Croatian chocolates. Still, so far as I know, no one has ever sent us a purposefully destroyed hard drive before. In a place where we take our devices' health seriously, it's a pretty good way to get our attention. On top of the drive was a transparent piece of plastic labeled, "Visual Verification of Destruction."
The package came from eDR Solutions, maker of the Hard Drive Crusher (HDC-V), a device that destroys your hard drive to help protect you from possible identity theft once you toss your PC out. The HDC-V drills a hole through your drive's spindle, "physically creat[ing] ripples in the platter making it impossible to recover data."
The Crusher weighs about 80 pounds and can destroy a disc in about 10 seconds, so up to 60 disks in an hour. The HDC-V uses a standard wall outlet and can crush over 100,000 disks without having to be serviced, according to eDR. It runs $11,500--pricey, but not bad compared to the potential cost of identity theft. It's also a potentially endless source of crusheriffic fun.
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April 30, 2008 5:55 PM
Good lord - when I worked support, I could have used something like this. We all kept boxes of dead drives under our desks because we couldn't just chuck them (government data and all), so we just had a party one day where we took drills and sledgehammers to them. This would have been way more fun!
That being said, I think you guys should start a series of posts about the kind of schwag you get that you don't wind up writing about! I think it'd be hilarious to see the stuff that lands in your mailroom!
May 1, 2008 8:06 AM
Maths: destroy one in 10 seconds, so that's 60 in an hour? What do you do with the other 50 seconds of each minute? Cigarette break? O-kay...
May 1, 2008 2:49 PM
I find that a drill and metal bit, while not as fast is equally effective.
May 1, 2008 6:10 PM
Here's an interesting video (that I created for a friend of mine who's a partner at the Canadian distributor) showing the Disk Crusher "in action"
http://gallery.mac.com/parsons.jim/101724
It's a very cool device. -Jim
May 2, 2008 11:51 AM
At various sites, I have also seen a hard drive shredder. Very fast and literally makes BBs out of your hard drive.
May 2, 2008 12:08 PM
I've found that drilling a hole through the platters the tossing the drive in an open top dumpster during the winter works very well...
May 2, 2008 2:54 PM
While the end result isn't as cool, a hard drive degausser works just as well, and is a heck of a lot cheaper.
May 3, 2008 6:33 AM
I've always found that a 7.62x39mm rifle round from an SKS does a good job. With a 30 round mag, that means I can destroy 30 HDD in as many seconds. As a bonus, it's also a great stress reliever (ala Officespace printer scene).
May 4, 2008 7:21 PM
What I do is dismantle dead drives and take out the platters then convert them into drinks coasters with my business logo in the centre (self-stick cork sheet makes a great backing) and present these to the customer. Great marketing angle and they have your name / phone number always to hand as well. It also makes a great conversation piece when guests (potential customers) ask what it is As for the rest of the drive - scrap aluminium prices are high plus there are places that buy circuit boards by weight for re-cycling.
May 5, 2008 4:19 PM
With good enough technology, such as that used by the police force or FBI, etc., it is possible to read data from even tiny parts of a hard disk's magnetic surface. On a 100Gb hard disk with 2 platters, for example, one square millimeter of platter material can hold about a megabyte of information: plenty to get data from with good enough equipment! The only way to destroy data: Melt the platters into a ball of metal...
May 7, 2008 6:44 AM
This product sounds like a stupid waste of resources.
Thankfully there are still thinking people here.
How about recycling the Hard Drives? (nice one Barry)
Or degauss them and then give away to charity? (thanks James)