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I remember watching a Defcon conference where they tested different methods for destroying a hard drive in place. And they found that thermite actually doesn't
by nowahe 7y ago
I remember watching a Defcon conference where they tested different methods for destroying a hard drive in place.
And they found that thermite actually doesn't damage the platters (well at least not enough for data to be unrecoverable).
Hard drive platters are surprisingly heat/chemical resistant. I think they found that the best method was to physically destroy the platters.
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoDid they test SSDs?
- dwyerm 7y agoHighly recommended by me, too: Zoz at DefCon 23, entitled "And That's How I Lost My Other Eye...Explorations in Data Destruction" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bpX8YvNg6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bpX8YvNg6Y
- dlgeek 7y agoI remember watching that talk years ago. I was disappointed in the lack of rigor of their conclusions. The whole point of thermite-based HDD destruction is to get the platens over the Curie temperature so the magnetic field is gone, not to physically destroy them. They point this out in the start, but then never talk about whether this was achieved or not in their experiment (assumably so they could go on to the actual explosives). It was entertainment, and I'd take any results with a grain of salt.
- namibj 7y agoThe guy worked on it further. He eventually solved the original challenge.