Big disks: what are they good for?

Friday, August 5th, 2011

No one enjoys receiving angry emails. But in this case it’s probably my own fault.

For the latest issue of PC Pro (with subscribers  now, on sale Thursday) I carried out a Labs group test of 15 USB 3 hard drives in a range of capacities going right up to 3TB. And in my column I questioned whether the typical customer has any legitimate need for this much space. (more…)

The Ideal 0101: a hard-disk destroyer with three tons of force

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

Last year we welcomed a DIY-style hard-disk destroyer into the Labs to wreak its havoc on some unsuspecting platters, but technology has evidently moved on – recently the Ideal 0101 HDP from Duplo (not that Duplo) has turned up.

While it looks like a kitchen cabinet from the eighties, it’s actually a serious piece of kit, with a heavy-duty punch that makes mincemeat out of both 3.5in and 2.5in drives.

Duplo International delivered the machine to us with a bin full of already-destroyed hard disks in tow, but we had to give it a go ourselves. Sure enough, the 3.5in disk we dug up from the bottom of the Labs – an IBM Deskstar sporting a capacious 185GB – was soon rendered useless thanks to a punch that pierces disks with between 2.5 and 3 tons of force, as the following video demonstrates. (more…)

Is Windows 7 killing your hard disks?

Monday, December 14th, 2009

I might simply be unlucky, or it could be that Windows 7 is a hard-disk killer. In the past two months, three different laptops running Windows 7 have totally died on me, while one had a minor collapse and refused to boot for an hour.

First of all, I should make it clear that these machines don’t have an easy life. My laptop travels with me wherever I go, and they have a fair bit of punishment on a daily basis: slung into a laptop bag and down a hill on a bike; into London on the train; and then a 25-minute walk bumping up and down before I get into the office. And then all the way back at the end of the working day.

Nevertheless, for the past six years two ThinkPads have survived without incident for three years apiece. Until I installed Windows 7 RC on the latest one, and the hard disk died. It’s currently sitting in my desk-side drawer whilst I consider what to do with it.

The Dennis IT department sprang to the rescue, offering me a spare workaday laptop from their collection. The first one lasted for less than a month before its hard disk whimpered its way into obsolescence.

Once more, our trusty IT team gazed into their cupboard and fished out a replacement – the exact same model. This one kept going for less than a week.

I initially blamed the two successive failures on the ageing 1.8in hard disks they used, but my confidence has been shaken again today. On Friday, I set up a new system: a desktop PC at work, a netbook to take on my travels. Both of them running Windows 7 and synchronising vital data via the cloud.

The desktop is still working fine, but the netbook wouldn’t boot for my journey into work, with Windows 7’s startup repair system eventually declaring it irreparable. Then, bizarrely, when I plugged it in at work the netbook started to work again (and it still is).

So, the question: am I alone in this? Or is my growing paranoia about Windows 7 and hard disks entirely unfair, and more due to my maltreatment of laptops than my choice of OS? Perhaps, as Steve Cassidy keeps on telling me, it’s time to drop the mechanical hard disk entirely and move to SSDs.

PC Pro’s top 10 hard disk destruction methods

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

It appears that our investigation into the Bustadrive, a home-made hard disk destruction device, has unleashed the latent violence that lurks within the average PC Pro reader: several folk entered into detailed discussions in our comments section and over on Slashdot about which calibre of bullet would do the best job of ensuring that no-one could get their hands on your credit-card details, and countless other readers have suggested similarly violent methods for disposing of your data.

We’ve been so impressed with the calibre of comments that we’ve compiled a list of our top ten hard disk destruction methods – although, since we’re ever so slightly scared of some of these people, they’re in no particular order.

(more…)

Meet Bustadrive, a home-made hard disk destroyer

Friday, August 14th, 2009

If your job involves having to destroy hard disks and make sure that their data is impossible to recover, you’ll know that it can be an expensive business: properly disposing of each hard disk can cost between £5 and £10 and, when you’re managing the IT affairs of potentially large businesses, these costs can mount up.

One IT Manager has had enough, though, and taken the matter into this own hands by creating the Bustadrive, a machine that uses a powerful “hydraulic punch” to physically deform a hard disk, rendering it virtually unreadable.

(more…)