Re: How to zero a failing disk drive before disposal?

On Thu, 2024-10-10 at 12:22 -0700, Doug Hardie wrote:
> I believe the easiest approach is to disassemble the unit, remove the
> platter and sand it.

Then "they" don't know what was on the hard drive, but "they" do know
that something was on it. Who owns a sandblasting machine?

However, I'm sure most of us agree that sheer force is more effective
than nerdy software. You wouldn't make notes on paper illegible with an
eraser, you would first tear up the paper, then burn the shreds and
grind the ashes in a mortar and mix the ashes into the dog food.

For HDDs the Italian mafia probably uses pizza ovens. So it looks like
an accident to the public prosecutor's office if the hard drive got into
the pizzeria's pizza oven.

On Thu, 2024-10-10 at 13:34 -0500, robert@rrbrussell.com wrote:
>The cost of building a subverted drive isn’t worth the time or money
>for general distribution in the economy.

The first step is owning a company, this is possible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

The second step, which concerns your counter-argument, is possible by
switching from CMR to a well-developed SMR-like process. Who really
knows what efficient writing methods are available today? Even if it's
probably just a silly fantasy with HDDs, it's not far-fetched with SSDs.

The advantage of SSDs could be that the data is probably lost relatively
quickly if they have not been supplied with power for a long time.