Hard Drive Destruction

**Victor** · 07-01-2013, 06:12 PM

I am thinking the only thing really requiring physical destruction are the platters. Anyone ever think about belt sanding the platter surfaces somehow. Run them through like wood through a planner. I think they make sanders on a similar concept. Maybe a cheaper belt sander with some type of holding/guide fixture.....just thinking out loud.

**Bear** · 07-01-2013, 07:39 PM

Originally Posted by Victor

I am thinking the only thing really requiring physical destruction are the platters. Anyone ever think about belt sanding the platter surfaces somehow. Run them through like wood through a planner. I think they make sanders on a similar concept. Maybe a cheaper belt sander with some type of holding/guide fixture.....just thinking out loud.

because you'd still have to handle the hard drive disks, which would leave traces of info on your fingertips, and after you're done with the job, you might be inclined to go party, get drunk, and maybe slap a dancers ass, which would get you fighting with a bouncer, arrested and fingerprinted, see where we're coming from? Then in 10 or 20 years your prints have been digitized, and some hacker is cleaning out the police garbage and lifts the info from the hard drives from your fingerprints, busted! Of course we'll prolly all be gone on by then, but they can still get a court order to come dig us up(and you don't even wanna know what happens then)

I'm wondering if the platters are all aluminum or glass, why they don't just pull and incinerate them?

**NobleMetalWorks** · 07-01-2013, 09:35 PM

Melting the plates down is a novel idea. The problem I always run into when I make a transaction where destruction is required is that the customer wants proof of destruction. I recently purchased material from a Silicon Valley manufacturer that required proof of destruction, and specified shredding specifically, and then wanted a sample of the material after shredding to insure the shred was their material. If you incinerate there is no way to tell what the incinerated material is, I think this is why this method isn't used by customers requiring proof of destruction.

Some government agencies shred their own material, and you can purchase it off the government auction sites already destroyed, and some require the customer to destroy it, and provide proof, still others require a government official to represent the destruction so they have an eye witness.

It's a crazy world we live in, nobody trusts anyone anymore, so sometimes you have to jump through hoops to get an otherwise very simple task done, just to insure you are keeping with the owners requirements.

Scott