I have ~10 HDDs that I’d like to dispose of. For a while, I tended to buy unwarrantied used disks for my NAS, so these have all failed in some form or another over the years. I can’t just toss them, because they have my (unencrypted) data on them, but I can’t wipe them either since they don’t mount anymore. I want a simple and reliable way to render the contents unrecoverable. A nation state is not part of my threat model, but any kind of data reconstruction that could be bought with civilian money is.

I’ve tried:

  • Smashing with tools (largely ineffective)
  • Punching holes with a drill press (how many holes are needed to ruin the disk? Also I’ve broken/dulled a few bits doing this)
  • ShortN0te@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    16 days ago

    Just a simple hole renders them useless. The only method to reconstruct them from there would be any kind of SEM or AFM which would still take weeks to months to years depending on the size/density of the drives.

    Even just opening them up and smacking the disks would be sufficient

    Next time just encrypt them.