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.

Now, one of our readers has written to put the very valid point that an eager videographer or photographer can easily fill several terabytes of storage in a few years, or even months. Developers too may need to work with – and back up – huge data sets. My (admittedly slightly mischievous) suggestion that large drives were mostly useful for storing downloaded porn and illegal Blu-ray rips did not amuse, and I can see why.

Here’s what I should have made clearer in my column: when I referred to “the typical customer”, I didn’t mean the many enthusiasts and professionals we’re proud to count among our readers. It’s understood that PC Pro readers are, overall, a demanding lot when it comes to IT resources. I dare say Jon Honeyball generates more than 3TB of data before breakfast.

My comments were aimed more at the man in the street – what we might call the PC World customer, if that’s not an unfair stereotype. This, after all, is the target market for this new wave of huge yet cheap USB drives, and this is the context in which I was questioning the need for so much storage.

Of course, cheap storage is valuable to power users too, but that’s a different market – one where multi-terabyte storage devices have been common for years. Perhaps I should have made that distinction explicit.

So please don’t be offended if it looks like I’m dismissing your computing needs. If you’re in the market for a 3TB hard disk then I say more power to you, and I hope you find our Labs helpful – no matter what your plans might be for the drive.

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.

That’s enough power, according to Duplo, to theoretically lift a truck, so you can be sure it’ll put a rather large dent in the average hard disk.

It’s not the quick cut-and-shut process you’d assume it is, either – instead, the 0101 seems to enjoy its particular method of torture. Press the power button with a hard disk in the slot and, once it’s illuminated by a green light, the punch emerges from the side of the bay, slowing piercing its way through metal, silicon and glass, before retreating once the disk is destroyed.

Once that’s done, a flick of a switch drops the hard disk into an obsolete abyss. Or, more realistically, a bin in the bottom of the cabinet.

Of course, punching a hole through a hard disk doesn’t necessarily render the data destroyed – I’m pretty sure NASA would be able to retrieve it, for instance – but it certainly makes it incredibly difficult to retrieve any information without specialist equipment.

It’s a viable option for security-conscious businesses who need to ensure that data can’t be retrieved – and, as we’ve seen, it’s pretty satisfying to use, too. The catch? Well, that’ll be the price – £1,995 excluding VAT.

Would you shell out that much, or have you got a favourite – and cheaper – hard-disk destruction method? Let us know in the comments.

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.

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.

1 – The classic hammer was suggested by several readers, including David, Nick, Stuart and the enigmatically-named “Waste of Money”, who suggested that we “just hit the drive with a hammer” before branding the Bustadrive a “stupid invention”. After seeing this video detailing the precise method to use when hammering a hard disk, we can’t deny that it looks plenty of fun.

2 – “What’s wrong with an angle grinder?” asked Simon – a fair question considering that one of these fearsome tools could be used to instantly slice through hard disks rather than being used as a prop on Britain’s Got Talent. If there’s anyone out there with an angle grinder going spare, then we’re keen to see precisely how many sparks fly when disc meets platter – grinders to the usual address, please.

3 – The average welding torch, meanwhile, is a fully paid-up member of the “life-threatening but enormously enjoyable” club – and there’s no denying that a 3,000-degree flame would reduce the average hard disk platter to a pool of reflective liquid quicker than you could say “data protection”. It’s a superb suggestion from Steve, who also put forward the angle grinder for consideration. We’re worried about him.

4 – Several other readers, most of whom named themselves as “anonymous”, suggested various forms of weaponry, from 12-gauge shotguns to high velocity rifles – and, as Beard showed with a link to this video, it looks like somebody has beaten us to it, proving that it takes precisely 18 hard disks to stop a serious piece of ammunition.

5 – Science fans will be pleased to see an electromagnet on the list, which was suggested by the effervescent Wes, who explained that he takes his old hard disks “en masse to the local scrap yard”, where they’re subjected to the whims of an electromagnet “at the end of a crane”. Apparently, this destroys the drive heads and wipes all data from the drives simultaneously and also makes the disks fly ten feet into the air, suspended by the sheer power of the magnets. All we know is that we’d really, really like to try this out before we shuffle off this mortal coil. Presumably it’s a little bit like this, only far larger, far more dangerous and much more fun.

6 – Another solution inspired by electricity was far simpler: use a drill. While it may not have the physics kudos of an electromagnet, there’s no denying that drilling through a hard disk would be deeply satisfying – and a very efficient method for erasing your data.

7 – Hard disk platters are generally made from aluminium, which melts at 660.32°C and can be recycled into all manner of objects, from drinks cans to brand-new computer components. Monkeyship was the reader urging us to do our bit for the environment, then, by slinging used hard disks into the nearest furnace, salvaging the liquid aluminium for future generations and getting rid of your sensitive data at the same time.

8 – Electric log splitters may be good for, well, splitting logs, but these powerful devices surely have other uses, with reader John suggesting that splitting hard disks in half could be just as rewarding. There can’t be many disposal methods that let you recreate a pivotal scene from 1995 James Bond flick Goldeneye, either, even if you won’t be able to finish off Pierce Brosnan at the same time.

9 – An industrial shredder must be one of the most effective and satisfying ways to destroy your data. If you don’t believe us, take a look at this video and watch as the relentless machine churns its way through hundreds of gigabytes of data with nary a care in the world.

10 – Finally, another method that scores valuable points for science: Thermite. Even its Wikipedia page sounds tantalising, describing the “short bursts of extremely high temperatures” that result from its use and detailing how some types of Thermite reaction can heat victims to 2,500°C. Also tempting is the list of tasks that Thermite is normally used for: welding railway tracks together, disabling artillery pieces on the battlefield and as a key ingredient in some types of hand grenade. Suffice to say that there’s enough power here to blow the average Caviar Blue to smithereens.

These ten methods are the best that our dear, violent readers have managed to come up with so far – but, now that we’ve got a taste for it, we’re hungry for more. What other fantastically destructive methods would you use to take out your hard disks, and how would you ensure that your data could never be recovered, no matter how many scans with an electron microscope?

]]> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/08/20/pc-pros-top-10-hard-disk-destruction-methods/feed/ 116 http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/08/14/meet-bustadrive-a-home-made-hard-disk-destroyer/ http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/08/14/meet-bustadrive-a-home-made-hard-disk-destroyer/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:08:18 +0000 Mike Jennings http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/?p=6808 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.

The Bustadrive is a product born out of the many frustrations of Ross Waterton, who spent “years decommissioning PCs” and handing hard disks over to destruction companies in a “readable state” but only being given a certificate to let him know that his disks had been destroyed and the data on them hadn’t been accessed – but that wasn’t enough for Waterton, who would have preferred a more water-tight solution.

Waterton built the prototype to use with his own firm’s hard disks but also lent it to friends within the industry – “who all suggested that [Waterton] manufacture and sell the unit”, especially when competing hard disk crushers were “expensive in comparison” to the Bustadrive.

Opinions were mixed when the device arrived in the PC Pro office, though – while I loved the machine and could see exactly where Waterton was coming from, other members of the team doubted that the bent platters of our pair of test disks were actually unreadable. To verify Waterton’s claims, we contacted data destruction companies to get their take on the Bustadrive.

Richard A. Tanfield-Johnson, from ITGreen Computer Recycling, said that “simply chopping the platter in half wouldn’t remove the data” and confirmed that it could be recovered – but the costs of retrieving any remaining information “would be prohibitive”. That’s because you’d need “something along the lines of an electron scanning microscope” to read the data from the remains of the platter – and those currently sell second-hand for at least £40,000.

Tanfield-Johnson also confirmed that, once you’d cracked open a hard disk to extract the platters within, recovering any data would become even more difficult, because you’d need “the same model and make of [circuit] board” to access each track of data on the disk. So, unless you’re willing to spend tens of thousands of pounds, it looks like your data is safe.

Andrew Speedie, a security controller for Secure IT Disposals Limited, concurred, and explained that there are two ways to generally recover data from hard disks – keyboard recovery and laboratory recovery.

Keyboard recovery is only effective when the disk is “mechanically undamaged” and the disk can be plugged into a PC and software can recover the data – and the Bustadrive certainly doesn’t leave disks mechanically undamaged.

Laboratory recovery, meanwhile, “requires specialist equipment” to read disk platters and sometimes has to be conducted by hand, which can take a huge amount of time “depending on the level of damage”. It’s fair to say that laboratory recovery will be beyond the scope and budgets of those looking to recover data from the average hard disk, with Speedie unable to give names of the specialist organisations who can perform such tasks.

The Bustadrive, then, looks like it’ll thwart all but the wealthiest and most determined of hard disk hackers – and, costing just £200 to buy and with a £75 hiring option being considered, it’s far cheaper than both competing products and other services that offer to shred, crush and destroy hard disks. If you destroy a decent number of disks then the Bustadrive could pay for itself within weeks.

Waterton claims that if you invest in the Bustadrive it’ll become “as essential as a screwdriver” – so, if you’d like more information on this unique product and would like to find out more, visit Bustadrive’s website.