[BBLISA] Looking for disk destruction in metro Boston/Manchester NH area.

[Rudie, Tony]

The level of paranoia is the key question.  If this were my own personal data, I would do one of the steps John and Scott mention, and move on.  If this were my employer's data, (and therefore, perhaps, many many people's data) I would, and we do, spare no expense to make sure the disks are unreadable.

- Tony Rudié
- 
-----Original Message-----
From: bblisa-bounces at bblisa.org [mailto:bblisa-bounces at bblisa.org] On Behalf Of John Stoffel
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2013 10:52 AM
To: Scott Ehrlich
Cc: bblisa at bblisa.org
Subject: Re: [BBLISA] Looking for disk destruction in metro Boston/Manchester NH area.


Scott> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Sean Lutner <sean at rentul.net> wrote:

>> Neither of those methods ensure that there would be no access to
>> the data off the platters. In the case of just unscrewing the bolt,
>> if you don't then spin the drives up to cause the physical damage,
>> I would just take the platters out entirely and pop them in another
>> drive. Very simple. In the case of drilling holes you may prevent
>> access to some data but very little of the over all data and you
>> can piece things back together if need be.

Realistically, if you have a couple of holes in the platters, once the
drive spins up and the head moves across the hole, it's going to
bounce and the hit the platter, causing all kinds of problems.  

Again, what level of paranoia are you going to use here?  Yes, the
NSA/CIA/FBI might be able to pull some data off a platter with holes
in it, but at what cost?  

In 99.999% of all cases, just doing either of these two steps will
effectively destroy the drive and any data on them.  

If you need certainty, then shredding or a sledge hammer (a warped
platter isn't going to be ready by anyone) will do the trick to any
degree.