On Thursday 13 January 2005 04:25, mike hoy wrote:
> If somebody wanted to completely destroy a harddrive or flash drive so
> that no data whatsoever could ever be extracted from it how would they
> go about doing that?
Open it and then incinerate the media at a high temperature. For rotating
magnetic media, the high temperature does several non-reversable things.
First, it causes the oxide to oxidise much, much more (hence the need to
"open it" before burning). Secondly, the platter material (metal or glass)
will deform. And thirdly, and residual magnetism in the platter material is
significantly lessened (because the high heat enables the individual atoms to
alter their orientation).
For solid-state media (e.g.., compact flash), the material is oxidised (and
undergoes other chemical changes in exposure to the open air) and physically
deformed.
For either type, exposing the media to a blowtorch should be sufficient.
Too bad neither Ben Avery nor the Scottsdale Gun Club permit the use of
anything other than paper targets. A couple of .45-sized holes would do
pretty good, too.
--
Ed Skinner,
ed@flat5.net,
http://www.flat5.net/
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