Quote Originally Posted by wdaddy View Post
Hmmm... From what remember is volatile hard disk drive cache system is used as a buffer. Without being powered up this will be empty. Non-Volatile memory on the hard drive board tells the board how to read that platters... this info is locked in and can't be overwritten without knowing what you are doing and it doesn't hold any user data... just machine code... just like the bios on the motherboard.

I am contracted to destroy hard drives, first I do a wipe on the drive, then I disassemble them, then I degauss the platters, and finally I shear the platters into at least 4 parts. All the platters are mixed together in a tote and taken in for aluminum scrap... Yes, if someone could find all the parts of the platters and study them under an electron microscope, and they can reverse all the other things I do, they may be able to pull data... but not likely. I have no worries about the PC boards leaking anything...



If a data thief were to gain access to personal data with my boards it wouldn't be because of anything I did, it would be because of the person who thought all they had to do was pull the pc board off a drive to make it secure. That would be a very bad practice. I hope no one here does that and thinks it's sufficient... at least hit the drive with a sledge if you don't want to open them... just to screw up the bearings and bend the platters...


You are going way over board and wasting time and money. With todays technology a single deep level wipe is enough to erase all data on a hard drive permanently as long as all sectors were written over. Because data on drives is so condensed even using an electron microscope data will be almost impossible to recover (cost prohibitive).

The current DOD specs have not been updated since the 80's when this type of recover was possible. On magnetic tapes and smaller drives.

Degassing the platters isn't necessary if you sheer them. Neither is sheering them if you Degas them.

Simply taking the drives apart and either sheering or degassing is more that enough to destroy the data beyond recovery. Hell your finger prints on the patter are enough to destroy the data beyond readability with out FBI/NSA level equipment and your every day identity thief will not have access to the millions for that equipment, the knowledge of how to use it or access to the labs at the FBI/NSA.