Even a dedicated lab might not be able to read your data once you’ve hammered nails through the platters.
Usually what they do is they take out the platters in a clean-room environment and place them in an otherwise identical drive, then read from that. But a deformed platter with a hole in it will cause extreme oscillations once you start rotating it at thousands of RPM. Which will crash the head(s) pretty much instantly.
So realistically, outside of an MI6-style lab with Q and his team using custom-built equipment dedicated to reading data from purposely destroyed drives, I don’t see how anyone could do it. Would love to hear from someone who works in data recovery or is in contact with people who do, though.
One thing we haven’t talked about, by the way, is how to prevent SSDs from having their data recovered. That should be straightforward though, just schwack the NAND chips with a hammer until they’re all broken. As with the HDD, be sure to wear appropriate PPE to protect against eye injury and dust inhalation.
Regarding #5, don’t bother with the wiring. No data stored there. It’s all in the magnetic coating of the platters.
Yeah, drilling a hole in there should stop anyone this side of a dedicated lab from reading your data.
Even a dedicated lab might not be able to read your data once you’ve hammered nails through the platters.
Usually what they do is they take out the platters in a clean-room environment and place them in an otherwise identical drive, then read from that. But a deformed platter with a hole in it will cause extreme oscillations once you start rotating it at thousands of RPM. Which will crash the head(s) pretty much instantly.
So realistically, outside of an MI6-style lab with Q and his team using custom-built equipment dedicated to reading data from purposely destroyed drives, I don’t see how anyone could do it. Would love to hear from someone who works in data recovery or is in contact with people who do, though.
One thing we haven’t talked about, by the way, is how to prevent SSDs from having their data recovered. That should be straightforward though, just schwack the NAND chips with a hammer until they’re all broken. As with the HDD, be sure to wear appropriate PPE to protect against eye injury and dust inhalation.