Destruction Process
* Remove the hard drive, tape, or cartridge from the computer or storage unit.
* Place the device flat or on its side and strike it with a heavy
hammer until it is crushed. Note: Pay particular attention to
damaging the platters inside hard drives where data is magnetically
recorded. This type of damage will normally discourage the average
person from attempting to recover any data.
* All destroyed hard drives, tapes, and other storage media must
be sent to Property Disposition for proper disposal.
http://www.umich.edu/~ofa/PropDisp/html/compprocedure.html
Physical Destruction or Physically Damaging the Media
Top
Physically disassembling a disk drive and "randomly" removing the
platters from the spindle is a highly effective form of protection.
Despite claims to the contrary, technology does not exist to remove
the platters (without extensive control measures) from one device and
read them back with another machine.
At the time of manufacture, control signals (servo information) are
written to every drive after is has been assembled. Any attempt to
recreate or read back these signals once the exact alignment and
relative positioning of the platters and the head stack have been
altered is virtually impossible.
Commercial data recovery companies (including ourselves) have invested
heavily into research to overcome some of these problems. At Data
Recovery Labs, we have been successful in many forms of platter
transplants - but in every case - the removal of the disks must be
done with exacting measurements to maintain the positioning in
relation to the spindle that they are mounted on. If the platters are
removed - without strict engineering methodologies - the surfaces are
useless for data recovery purposes.
Industry sales reps routinely boast of removing platters and reading
them in another drive and often allude to mysterious capabilities, but
when specifically questioned on their success with physically removed
platters they claim that each case is different and must be handled on
a one by one basis. If pressed for examples of successful platter
removal and recovery, they will usually claim it's a matter of not
wanting to violate company confidentiality or reveal trade secrets.
Of course, once a platter has been physically removed, there is no
reason not to have them simply scored with a single line to scrape the
magnetic coating right off the platter. This would eliminate the one
in a million miracle chance that alignment in a new assembly is the
exact same as the original.
http://www.actionfront.com/dataremoval.html#Physical |
