gigawin Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 out of curiosity, is there a way to make destroy a mechanical hard drive with physically damaging it? i know flash drives and be written to and they will wear out, but is there something like this for mechanical hard drives? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psionicinversion Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 if it destroying a hard drive without physically damaging it?? well apparently deleting the MBR master boot record damages it alot. there was a virus that used to do it. not sure if it rendered it completely useless or not but definately had the desired result Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xendrome Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 MBR won't make it unusable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BGM Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 wave a very strong magnet near it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
123456789A Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 Cast a spell on it. Dashel 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dashel Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 What do you mean by destroy? Physical destruction is the safest (quickest) way. If you are just looking to 'clear' any data traces, do a multi-pass DOD wipe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee G. Veteran Posted August 22, 2013 Veteran Share Posted August 22, 2013 There was a thread about this earlier this month: https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1168885-ruin-a-mechanical-hard-drive-without-physically-damaging-it/ I hope there's no malicious intent behind your question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raa Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 (edited) Put it in a microwave for 5 minutes? You'll probably have an awesome fireworks display and burn out your microwave though. :laugh: Edit : Actually that counts as physical damage. Still cool to try though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon H Supervisor Posted August 22, 2013 Supervisor Share Posted August 22, 2013 no offense but wasn't there another topic exactly like this one a couple weeks ago (i don't think it was by this OP though) that ended up getting locked because everyone was suspicious? edit: yep, found it https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1168885-ruin-a-mechanical-hard-drive-without-physically-damaging-it/ Mindovermaster 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobbyJobs Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 If you mean to make it look like it has never been tampered with and almost instantly damaged then yes. Put the HDD in a steamer and then leave it in a hit but very humid and damp area. This will crap it up. Another way to make it so it can still be read but damaged and have it come up as failing. would be give power to the HDD then heat it up with a hair dryer or stick it in oven (must be turned on with power still). This will cause drive to overheat. Normally it will still spin up but come up with crap loads of errors sometimes it wont work at all. Another way.. Drop it. I am not sure exactly what you mean by the question though if you want to wipe a HDD then use http://www.dban.org/ This is write over the driver a number of times and make everything unrecoverable. The drive will still work at the end of this. Oh another way would be firmware update on the hard drive during update pull the SATA lead / power. If you are trying to stop police or something from seeing what is on the HDD fast then a large magnet or using http://www.truecrypt.org/ are your best options. I recommend TrueCrypt.. at least that way you can still use the HDD if its a false alarm and when they find ###### all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindovermaster Moderator Posted August 22, 2013 Moderator Share Posted August 22, 2013 no offense but wasn't there another topic exactly like this one a couple weeks ago (i don't think it was by this OP though) that ended up getting locked because everyone was suspicious? Yes, there was one like this a few weeks ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vcfan Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 There was a thread about this earlier this month: https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1168885-ruin-a-mechanical-hard-drive-without-physically-damaging-it/ I hope there's no malicious intent behind your question. first thread was started by user NEOhelp this thread was started by user gigaWIN same guy :laugh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raa Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 first thread was started by user NEOhelp this thread was started by user gigaWIN same guy :laugh: I think you're reaching there... But let's get a mod to check just in case! :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ph1b3r0pt1c Posted August 22, 2013 Share Posted August 22, 2013 out of curiosity, is there a way to make destroy a mechanical hard drive with physically damaging it? i know flash drives and be written to and they will wear out, but is there something like this for mechanical hard drives? I wrote an application that kept the write head in the same place of a hard disk and would eventually scratch it, rendering it useless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wrack Posted August 23, 2013 Share Posted August 23, 2013 EMP should do it. No sign of external physical damange but insides are fried. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McKay Posted August 23, 2013 Share Posted August 23, 2013 EMP should do it. No sign of external physical damange but insides are fried. Detonating a tactical nuke in orbit should achieve this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
primexx Posted August 23, 2013 Share Posted August 23, 2013 Detonating a tactical nuke in orbit should achieve this. although a fried internal is still physical damage. i can't think of *any* way of destroying an HDD without physically damaging or altering it in some way. the best you can do is get rid of all the data on it, but it's still usable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wrack Posted August 23, 2013 Share Posted August 23, 2013 Wipe of all data using Eraser with 1000s of cycles and keep doing it until the electronics can no longer take it. You can't make something not usable without damaging it in a very little way somewhere. Especially Hard Drives as they are made quite solid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medhunter Posted August 23, 2013 Share Posted August 23, 2013 Why would you have to do so? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goretsky Supervisor Posted August 23, 2013 Supervisor Share Posted August 23, 2013 Hello, I can think of a number of ways to accomplish this, depending upon your skillset, tool availability and, of course, budget. If you can tell me a little more about your requirements I can give a more detailed answer. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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