<m.roth@...> writes:
m.roth@... wrote:
[...]
Alternatively, the answer on another techie mailing list I'm on is that you could disassemble the disks and use thermite.
Just a hammer, no need to disassemble the case.
I dunno, a buddy who was in army intel back in the early eighties told me, about 10 years ago, that they could flatten out the platters and read some data. Thermite not only melts the platters, but will hit the Curie point.
mark "and make nice flames and melting metal"
Over the years I've ended up with a pile of old hard drives. Some are unreliable; some won't even spin up and some are just REALLY old (e.g., 100s of MB size). I also inherited a couple of rifles (M-1 Garand and M-1 Carbine). I'm thinking write /dev/urandom to ones that will spin but then take the whole lot out in the country for some target practice. It may be possible to scape a little data off of what's left after the drive gets hit with a round from the Garand but I doubt if anyone will want to go to the trouble. It could also be fun.
Cheers, Dave