Question: I need to make two hard drives unreadable. Unfortunately, I have some constraints which make this harder than usual (in particular, they rule out the answers to other questions):

• I don t have a computer to mount the drives and erase them (weird, right?)
• I don t have a strong magnet
• I don t have the right tools (screwdrivers ) to properly dismantle the drives
• I don t have access to corrosive chemicals
• I don t have a sledgehammer.

How can I destroy the drives with the least monetary / material requirements?

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is to pinch off the connection pins, and perhaps destroy the circuit board using a small hammer.

I realise that given all the above constraints this may be too much to ask. I m willing to settle for whatever I can get. I don t have to fulfil legal obligations of data security, and the data on the discs, though personal, is not critical. I don t want to prevent the FBI from reading my discs, just the next door wannabe MacGyver.

Answer: HDD are much more resistant than people think. And in one HDD the only thing that really matters are the platters inside it.

Can you make holes over your HD, drilling it? Make sure to drill from top to bottom. 3 holes and you’re good. See that one HD have the platters somehow delimited in the top of it, and the connectors are on the other side. Make the holes in the marked positions.

————| ?|| ?O ?|| ?O ?|| ?O ?|| ?| ?/| ?|———— ? power data

Using a hammer and throwing it against the concrete floor are also good (let’s say, 20% compared to make holes).

Running over with a car, even using rocks, is too little to damage the platters.

Fire is insuficient. (About 11 years ago, someone set fire on +- 20 computers in the prosecutor’s office I worked, only in 1 computer we couldn’t recover the HD data).

Platters are resistant. Someone said about fingerprints over it: once we opened one HDD, and with it running, we thrown some cigar ashes over it. It was still useable. Putting fingers over it: we still could recover information. It only stoped working when we used a screwdriver to create scratches over it.