Applying sledgehammer to computer hard drives

My God, you have WAY too much time on your hands!

I'm not that much amazed how weak your are.

Nick

High velocity data destruction works much better. 7 Rem. Mag. at 100 yds. will punch straight through all platters and cause enough shock to shatter the cast aluminum frame. .22 LR will stop by the second platter BTW.

Waste of a couple of large rare-earth magnets (per drive) you could get by disassembling (sometimes only 1, sometimes a few tiny ones as well).

Not to mention nice aluminum for casting, when you strip off the other crap, and some reasonable bearings. Sledgehammer - how...subtle.

Iggy needs to start an apple orchard or a brush company.

Karl

"Ecnerwal" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@news.verizon.net...

I needed a few of the magnets. Drill out pins, screw, .... Used a large 5lb hammer. Hit on the sides, pull the cover off... get your powerful magnets...

xman

Regarding a comment that I have too much time on my hands -- the hope was to SAVE time by just hitting the drive with a sledgehammer.

The magnets inside the drive have to be the coolest things on the planet! They are a pain to deal with but once you get them out they are very useful to have around if anyone has never pulled one apart I'd recommend it just for the parts.

At the bank I worked for we had a drill press that we sent all the drives to that were being sunset. While I agree shooting them would be way more fun we needed to document the destruction of the platters and a 3/8" hole did the trick. (Then we scammed the magnets!)

You can buy them by the hundred on eBay, for not too much, in my more useful shapes. I have a lot of rare earth magnets and they are very useful, but extracting them from hard drives is not cost effective (I tried).

this is something i've been wondering about, i mean, not a LOT but was wondering. the thread about a way to slow down a windmill using magnets and a non-ferrous disc creating eddy effects... wouldn't a computer hard drive do the same thing? fast spinning non-ferrous disc spinning rapidly near a rare earth magnet? wouldn't you need at a certain point like a 3/4 hp motor to spin the disc in a hard drive?

Not surprising,

If you take one apart before you sledge it, you'll see the base plate is a sollid chunk of casting, they have to be to maintain the close tolerances.

The main spindle that the platters are on is in the center of the device so if you smacked it in the center your sledge was pretty much striking a sollid round piece of metal that got pushed directly on to the anvil, ya might as well have his a 2 inch round aluminum.

Best way to get maximun destruction in one blow would be to grab it in a vise about a 1/3 of the way up, below what would be the spindle and the hole it goes through, then smack the shit out of it, you'll have a better chance of cracking the base plate casting where the spindle goes through.

--.- Dave

Hummmm...I wonder if I should send him an e-book on improvised explosives.......

Gunner

Of course, everyone should have a copy of that as well as the military explosives tech manual... I expect we'll be needing them in the next few years...

"Pete C." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@snet.net:

I've got a couple of them floating around and always wondered how acurate they really are. (Puts tinfoil hat on) I've heard rummers that alot out there are intentially buggered up just enough to screw up (read 'screw up' as cause major body parts to move in oposite directions) to whoever might actually try to use the recipes or procedures. (Takes off tinfoil hat)

I do wish I could get my hands on info I could reasonably trust.

Bill

Try a highschool chemistry book,

This ain't rocket science..

--.- Dave

Geez Gunner,

I figured you'd have offered to give him a few rounds 357 :-)

--.- Dave

It's pretty easy to just take the hard drive apart with hand tools, no sledgehammer required.

All it takes is some tiny Torx (usually), a Phillips (often) and less than 3 minutes. No drilling or hammer required. Bet it takes me less time to take one apart than Iggy spent hammering.

Helps to remember that every "do not remove" label is c> this is something i've been wondering about, i mean, not a LOT but was

No. The magnets are off to one side of the disc, driving the head. They are in pole pieces that make for a very powerful field between the magnets (there's a coil on the head mechanism back-end that sits in-between there), but which also help to contain the field there. If you had them in a position to cause eddy currents, you'd destroy the magnetic data on the drive surface.

Note - some very old drives don't have such nice magnets - they have a stepper motor, but that's usually obvious from the outside of the drive.

When I needed to kill a data drive from where I used to work, a minute or two with the o/a torch did the job for me. :)

Wes