I 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

I 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.