Hard Drive Shredding/Destruction Service

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athlon1.2

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 10, 2001
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Does anyone know of a reputable company to contract for a small one-time destruction of approx 10 drives? Some of them are damaged and can't be wiped with software.
 
Hmm I don't know of any, but if you know someone with a machine shop, you could take a drill press to them... among other things :). That would probably be the cheapest route considering you only have 10 drives to destroy.
 
CINTAS (the place businesses use for uniforms, floor mats, etc) does it. Not sure if they have a minimum order or what.
 
If they still spin up, quickest way is to open the cover, turn it on, use sandpaper or other rough material to grind the entire surface. Remove the first platter, turn it around, repeat, then remove it completely and do the rest. Then bend/smash the platters and drill a bunch of holes and throw them out in different garbages. If this does not convince management that the data is 100% gone then I don't know what would.

I figure they probably want a "certified" company though, but it's worth bringing up.

While drilling, gun shots etc are most likely sufficient, one could argue that the data is still on the platters and with the right technology it could still be read. Technically you flatten the platters back and could fill in the holes with some kind of resin and make it flush then reinstall the platters into a new drive. Very long shot though.
 
OP What data is on these drives that you need wiped? DOJ data? Patient data? Personnel data? Credit Card data?
 
I often just run dban then run a small bead of solder with my high power soldering iron across the motor terminals. Anyone dumb enough to put that into their machine is in for a rude surprise.
 
If your any where near the Western New York area the company I work for is partners with the largest e-recycling in the area and they have a tire shredder that both our companies use for HD shredding.
 
Mackintire said:
I often just run dban then run a small bead of solder with my high power soldering iron across the motor terminals. Anyone dumb enough to put that into their machine is in for a rude surprise.
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Should load up some C4 inside the drive then hook it up to THAT. That will teach em to try snooping on company data. :p

You know, that would be so easy to do, it's kind of scary. Don't buy hard drives from the middle east. :D
 
Red Squirrel said:
I need to try this some day. Need to find a way to grind up some pop cans without mess. For the rust I can probably find some scrap pieces of metal and use electrolysis in salt water then scrape it off.
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You can buy thermite on ebay pretty cheaply. We picked up 5lbs for $35 a few years ago. Nice finely ground lab grade stuff too. Still have 3lbs left. A little goes a long way.....

I also don't have any "certified" solutions, but taking the platters off and taking an angle grinder to them is pretty easy. A drill press would be even easier if you don't need to destroy the entire surface of the disk. If you make a hot enough fire you can melt them down as well.

All this seems pretty pointless though. How many companies really store data that is valuable enough to overcome the $1M - $10M process of recovering data off a drive with a destroyed PCB, motor, and a hole through the platters? It seems like a massive waste of money to go with a "certified" solution.
 
Target practice is fun, PULL!!

Seriously, cast side down, 5lb sledgehammer. You'll be done in 1 minute. You can't read bent or cracked platters. ie - the disk must spin a uniform distance from a read head or it won't work.

A bandsaw takes too long, so does disassembly. A degausser wrecks them, but costs more and takes longer.
 
image_8185.jpg
 
Kids, don't try that at home.

Very radial method. Now we have seen gun and high-temp burning.
The sledge hammer is the easiest one and remind me to a video I saw recently on stability of ZFS raid. The guy was hitting two disks with a hammer while spinning and showed how the raid recovered.

Someone tried archery ?
 
If using a sledge hammer, duct tape several drives together, try to hit them from the side. That way you smash in and maybe even accordion the platters at the same time to some extent. Good luck recovering THAT!

I'm a big fan of total platter surface destruction though. You GUARANTEE that the data is completely physically gone. Putting a hole or denting the platter makes it impossible for the platter to be read in the traditional way it was designed for, but you always have to throw in the "what if" there is some type of scanner you can sit the platters on and it reads, then uses some advanced algorthm to figure out the encoding and order etc and reconstruct part of the data. It's a VERY long shot, very. But would you rather be pretty sure that nobody is ever going to recover the data, or be 100% sure, especially when it's business data where you can be held liable.

I'm not a big fan of degausers, because while it may completely wipe it magneticly, I rather see it being destroyed physically. Now these are VERY expensive and I imagine the reason for this is because they've been excruciatingly tested and certified, so I don't doubt they work, but it's all about piece of mind. I'd go with a shredder before a degauser. Even better: both. Degauss the drives then throw them in a shredder. The more drives the better because at the end, it's just a bunch of broken platters and hard drive chassis pieces. Even if the platters could theoretically be reconstructed and read, good luck figuring out what platter goes with what drive, or what drive is even what drive, because you don't have any drives, you just have a bunch of metal. :D

Fun prank: relabel a degausser as a "instant media defragmenter" and leave it out somewhere.
 
I just got a bunch shredded recently by a "certified" local company. It was something like $6 per drive with full documentation, $4 per drive without documentation.

For the price, it didn't make sense to manually wipe and destroy each one (over 200).
 
Ouch $1200? I'm in the wrong line of business. :p Actually I wonder what it takes to become certified to do this professionally. With a well build device it would make a nice side job. It's not like its something that happens often. Probably why it's so expensive. That and potential liability issues.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Ouch $1200? I'm in the wrong line of business. :p Actually I wonder what it takes to become certified to do this professionally. With a well build device it would make a nice side job. It's not like its something that happens often. Probably why it's so expensive. That and potential liability issues.
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They actually record the whole process for you from pickup to shredding if you opt for the "documentation" option - if I was so inclined to watch a 98 minute movie about it.

The use industrial shredders like the this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYPCPB1g3o

It's not degaussing, it's physical destruction to less than half-inch pieces, then proper disposal (because they contain lead, etc). Technically, just dumping a single hard drive in our standard garbage dumpster could cost us $10,000 in fines.
 
Innocence said:
They actually record the whole process for you from pickup to shredding if you opt for the "documentation" option - if I was so inclined to watch a 98 minute movie about it.

The use industrial shredders like the this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYPCPB1g3o

It's not degaussing, it's physical destruction to less than half-inch pieces, then proper disposal (because they contain lead, etc). Technically, just dumping a single hard drive in our standard garbage dumpster could cost us $10,000 in fines.
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Those are always fun to watch. :p And yeah disposal probably cost's some money too so that's probably included in the price. Guess from a company's point of view it's not really a lot of money at all to spend.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Those are always fun to watch. :p And yeah disposal probably cost's some money too so that's probably included in the price. Guess from a company's point of view it's not really a lot of money at all to spend.
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My current employer uses the " DOD secure wipe drives, excess from inventory, then store in leaky shed for 6 years until it is rusted solid, then recycle." Works pretty good.
 
Physically destroying the HDDs yourself and probably discarding pieces of it at different locations is probably the best/cheapest way. Unless of course some other party is willing to spend a good amount of money recovering said data if physically recovered then in that case thermite is the only option to be sure.
 
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I work for multiple companies that are certified in hard-drive destruction. They have machines that chip the hard-drives into a million little pieces. No-one will be getting any data back EVER. Then you get a nice certificate saying they were destroyed.
 
Xephian said:
Physically destroying the HDDs yourself and probably discarding pieces of it at different locations is probably the best/cheapest way. Unless of course some other party is willing to spend a good amount of money recovering said data if physically recovered then in that case thermite is the only option to be sure.
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Cheapest, maybe. Consider; if the data on the drives is covered by something like PCI or DOJ, you need to be able to prove that the drive was destroyed in a manner that renders the data unrecoverable. And saying "I took a sledge hammer to it" is not acceptable.

A lot of places have a chain of evidence on data drives. So they can show a history of each drive, from purchase to destruction.

The inability to produce said documentation in some industries lead to massive fines ( negating the 'cheapest' part ).

So it really comes down to what the data on the drives is.
 
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