ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld (Moe Trin) wrote in
news:slrnfs1kia.1ss.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us:

....
> Ah, but recall that N overwrites is only acceptable up to certain
> specified classification levels. If it's "The Deep Dark Secret That
> No One Should Ever Know About", the correct answer is to slag the
> drive - physical destruction of the media, followed by melting the
> residue. It's kind of hard to get anything off a ceramic platter
> when the platter is now a new glass coffee mug, and the aluminum
> platter is now a new can of Belch Beer.


Roasting is messy, hard on the environment, and can be unsafe, although
getting the disks and heads hotter than the Curie/Neel temperature is
effective and reasonably doable by amateurs.

The preferred method for complete destruction is degaussing by a machine
designed for the purpose (preferably over 8000 Gauss - machines are
available as high as 13000 Gauss) followed by shredding. Such degaussers
work quickly through the drive casing, warp heads, etc, and remove all
magnetic info from the drive including servo tracks, etc. This alone
irretrievably blitzes the drive. Shredding puts the final nails in the
coffin.

Cost for degaussing and shredding (with custody and audit trail) is about
$10-15/drive in reasonable quantities - probably considerably more on a
onesy-twosy basis. You can usually even arrange to witness the
destruction (sometimes for a fee) although some shops will balk about
safety/liability issues. Best method is to try to piggyback on a company
that already has a data/drive destruction contract with one of these
shops (they're often associated with, or part of, a commercial secure
paper-shredding shop).

Regards,
..