What's in my hard drive? How can I get rid of it?

[Daniel Feenberg]

On Tue, 17 Feb 2015, Michael Powell wrote:

> jd1008 wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> Remove the cover. Remove the platters. Smash all platters with large sledge
> hammer until all pieces are fairly small. Melt material with oxyacetylene
> welders torch. Repeat smashing with hammer. Soak for few hours in
> hydrofluoric acid. Rinse and allow to dry. Grind material into a fine
> particulate dust. Dispose of out the back of airplane while flying or drop
> into convenient nearby volcano. That might be good enough.
>
> Send the electronic components to Kaspersky for analysis.

I did once investigate claims that overwritten sectors could be read by 
sophisticated instruments and posted my results at:

   http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-gutmann.html


In short - that is pure science fiction.

daniel feenberg

>
> :-)
>
> -Mike
>
>
>
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