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Registered Member #1822
Joined: Fri Nov 21 2008, 08:04PM
Location:
Posts: 300
I made a 80:30 mix of FeO2 and Al and place it ontop of my HDD lit it and ran. Fire, smoke and molten metal follow and the HDD survived and was literally in a crater with untouched ground underneath it like in the cartoons. How can I melt my HDD?
Registered Member #2099
Joined: Wed Apr 29 2009, 12:22AM
Location: Los Altos, California
Posts: 1714
cduma wrote ... How can I melt my HDD?
Pack it in a few lbs of charcoal, in a cavity formed by stack of bricks, with an air blower or good natural convection. Bronze age technology still works.
Registered Member #2123
Joined: Sat May 16 2009, 03:10AM
Location: Bend, Oregon
Posts: 312
5:3 casting plaster:Aluminum dust cast as a form about the size of a coke can, with a hole in the end, will produce a hi-temp jet from that hole that I guarantee will melt the HDD platter.
Registered Member #1334
Joined: Tue Feb 19 2008, 04:37PM
Location: Nr. London, UK
Posts: 615
HDDs are amazingly tough. I used to destroy my company's old HDDs with a 12g with #6 shot:
However, whilst that one above destroyed a laptop drive nicely, I found the 3.5" platters are pretty much immune to lead shot, and whilst the platters were severely dented, they were rarely punctured, even from close range.... I haven;t tried steel shot yet...
As I worked for a financial institution which had serious data, i.e. valuable enough for people to use expensive recovery techniques if they got hold of any of our drives, I switched to using a proper destruct company - pretty cheap - worked out at about USD 10 /drive, and we got certificates of destruction for the auditors (need the paper trail!). The company I used was: There is a nice video on the page of the process: I like the nice flash of flame as the rare-earth magnets suffer...
Registered Member #1408
Joined: Fri Mar 21 2008, 03:49PM
Location: Oracle, AZ
Posts: 679
The rare-earth magnets in HDD's are great. It's a pity not to pull them out. I once got an old 5" SCSI drive that had several of the strongest magnets I have ever had, in it. I still have them and (no exaggeration) they individually can pull 225 lbs off the floor. (I tried it with Olympic weights & was shocked, it was so powerful.
Why in Heavens did you RUN when you lit the thermite? You can't see what's happening if you run.
Registered Member #1408
Joined: Fri Mar 21 2008, 03:49PM
Location: Oracle, AZ
Posts: 679
Dr. Slack wrote ...
So why does a rare earth magnet flash when you crunch it?
I believe that was a simple spark of scraping steel: I played it back and it didn't come from the corners where a magnet would be in a IDE drive, plus the wheels were turning pretty fast.
Registered Member #1334
Joined: Tue Feb 19 2008, 04:37PM
Location: Nr. London, UK
Posts: 615
Dr. Slack wrote ...
So why does a rare earth magnet flash when you crunch it?
Good question - that is what I was told when I asked them what was happening. They (and other similar companies) have stands at Infosec, the UK's main information security show - a good place for sad security types like me to play with some of the newer toys.
They give away little perspex boxes full of granulated drives - as geeky freebies go, its not a bad one, though the quality of give-aways in recent years has fallen badly...
Registered Member #882
Joined: Sat Jul 07 2007, 04:32AM
Location:
Posts: 103
They give away little perspex boxes full of granulated drives - as geeky freebies go, its not a bad one, though the quality of give-aways in recent years has fallen badly...
Find a use for your HD granules yet? A coherer maybe? Sounds like the crappiest giveaway ever. Keychains were too expensive? LED flashlights? Nah, we'll go with ground up metal-garbage. Wait, what?
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Thermite VS HDD
