m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: > 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. > in the 80s, disks held 10-20MB per 5.25" platter. now they hold 300MB per 2 or 3" platter. in the 80s, bits were written with simple MFM NRZI type recording techniques and the tracks were at absolute locations. Today, the data is written with high density predictive RLL techniques and embedded servo that said, my work has a policy of shreading/chipping/incincerating all old media. any other sort of erasure/clearing is far too time consuming and labor intensive. the old tapes, drives, etc are stored in a secure room, and once in awhile a data destruction truck comes by, and its all tossed into a giant chipper and comes out as ground scrap metal.