Applying sledgehammer to computer hard drives

I think the ones that are actual US govt./ military publications should be sufficiently trustworthy.

Most of the military manuals, especially the improvised anything ones, are only trustworthy if accompanied by the training that would have gone with them when they were issued to those that needed them.

As stand alone knowledge bases, the ones I have seen, left a bunch to be desired, and were written on the premise that the reader already knew many important things. They also presume access to supplies that would not be readilly available, outside a combat zone (eg, mortar shells, from which, anti personell mines could be improvised)

The basics of this stuff is easy, it's the million little details that'll get the experimentally minded reader killed.

Even the better written books, that I have seen, expected that a base of knowledge was available, and that the reader was not ignorant of the basic safety precautions.

Cheers Trevor Jones

On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:04:30 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Karl Townsend" quickly quoth:

Better yet, an apple brushing company!

-- Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. -- Elie Wiesel

On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:02:19 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, Gunner Asch quickly quoth:

Yes, just make sure it's the one on IEDs, not IUDs, OK? Hell, upload it to the dropbox, too. I'm sure it would interest many of us.

-- Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. -- Elie Wiesel

A single 3/8" hole would make the drive unuseable, but the data would still be recoverable (except right in the hole, of course).

ISTR the NSA figures that if a disc is in something like 43 or more pieces, the data is statistically irrecoverable. A nail or rod driven through the case at the right place seems to do the job. A hammer isn't necessarily going to break all the discs, especially if just one breaks and the others bounce around, padded by the head and other bits of glass.

There's two problems here.

- there's no anvil, not that you need one to smash a hard disk.

- you have a weak wrist or can't handle a sledgehammer.

You trying isn't saying much. You can't handle a hammer- there's not much you could do with a torx driver.

I know I've said it before, but it's funny that, just seeing a subject line, I can tell when you wrote it.

Great source of little parts. Your budding engineer of a son would probably find a great deal of pleasure from dissecting them.

Anything interesting happen if they're spinning at the time?

Im sure he already has those.

Gunner

I never tried dragging a battery out to power them up, however I suspect even a 15K RPM drive wouldn't do anything real interesting spinning vs. non spinning when hit with a 3,000 FPS+ projectile.

That was a MS windows hard drive, the only useful data was SSH keys.

On my linux box, I keep my secrets in a secure manner.

We actually dissected one before, he liked it and we indeed took the magnets out (and shiny platters). They are a little stronger than eBay magnets, but not my as much as to justify their weird shape, for actual use.

Would be fun to try spinning them without the cover. (using full face mask)

Just mill up a nice lexan replacement cover and call it wall art...

According to William Wixon :

Nope! The magnets are in a set of pole pieces which confine the field well away from the disks, and the coils on the back of the head arms are in the only place where there is much field.

Remember -- if the field got to the platters, it would happily erase the data on the platters, so there is very strong motivation to keep the magnets' fields confined where it can move the head arm stack and do nothing else.

Once you get the magnets out, if you try to separate the pole pieces, be careful. You can get some nasty blood blisters if you start to pry them apart and they snap closed again on your fingers. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

If you want to separate the magnets from the pole pieces, heat it up with a torch to soften the Loctite (or similar) which glues the magnets to the pole pieces. Put the pole piece in a vise, apply sideways pressure with a screwdriver (or with some wood), and heat the pole piece from below. When the Loctite softens, you will feel the magnet slide sideways on the pole piece, and you can continue shoving until it is clear. (It will probably flip over and stick to the back side of the pole pieces.) Anyway, once you have it separate from the pole piece, you can affix it to pole pieces designed to serve *your* needs instead of those of the disk drive.

Enjoy, DoN.

Larry, you're just...not right!