Net Zeros and Ones

CHAPTER 14How Not to Destroy Data

• 14.1 Drilling
  • 14.1.1 Nail Gun
  • 14.1.2 Gun
• 14.2 Acids and Other Solvents
• 14.3 Heating
• 14.4 Incineration
• 14.5 Street Rollers
• 14.6 Ice Shaving Machines

Anyone who has had to deal with getting rid of an old computer or smartphone has felt the anxiety of what to do about the data. Even if you are passing a device down the line to a child, relative, friend, or charity, there will be some trepidation. How can you be confident that none of your data will ever be viewed by the new owner? This visceral awareness leads to imaginative methods of data destruction, most do not preserve the device at all. The most common is to hit the hard drive with a hammer. Here are a few more.

14.1 Drilling

A quick trip to YouTube will pull up many home videos of people destroying hard disks. A frequently videoed process is to remove the hard drive from a PC or laptop and drill through the case and platters. This is certainly effective. It is highly unlikely that a hard drive so treated will ever function again. The average dumpster diver is not equipped to retrieve data from platters that cannot be simply plugged into a computer and read from the file system. Even common forensic tools will not be able to read a hard drive that has been subjected to a drill.

There are three reasons drilling hard drives is not a good idea. First, it can be dangerous if the hard drive is not held down properly and the drill operator does not take precautions like wearing goggles ...