[CentOS] help fdisk and dd

Fri Mar 5 22:33:57 UTC 2010
David G. Miller <dave at davenjudy.org>

 <m.roth at ...> writes:

> 
> > m.roth at ... 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