Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
#2Wouldn't a standard drill press accomplish the same thing, and be a lot cheaper?
Re: Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
#3If you happen to find yourself destroying SSDs, try not to make this mistake: https://i.imgur.com/XBbLQEQ.jpeg
Re: Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
#4Wouldn't a standard drill press accomplish the same thing, and be a lot cheaper?
Depending on your threat model, a drill isn't even the right tool.
This will significantly complicate data recovery and render data where the drill impacts it destroyed, but it will in theory still be possible to decap/analyse platters or nand with a SEM microscope and reconstruct data off the surviving parts of the storage medium.
The cost may not be worth it even to some state actors, but such a cost is peanuts to the NSA, CIA, or any other organisation tasked with geopolitical standing. Depending on who's after you, they may even pass it to these organisations to get the data for them at cut-rate.
Only sure-fire way is to toss it in one of those big grinders data destruction companies like Iron Mountain have. They even let you watch it go in.
Re: Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
#5If you happen to find yourself destroying SSDs, try not to make this mistake: https://i.imgur.com/XBbLQEQ.jpeg
I'm sorry to be an idiot—I can't tell if I'm looking at multiple views of one thing, or one view each of multiple things, or what. Is this just demonstrating that hard drives are commonly enclosed in oversized enclosures, so that it's easy to position the punch in a way that totally misses the actual electronics?
Re: Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
#6If you happen to find yourself destroying SSDs, try not to make this mistake: https://i.imgur.com/XBbLQEQ.jpeg
Hah.
Kinda wonder what’s on there. Just because somebody didn’t want anybody to see. Probably just boring business records or something though.
Re: Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
#7This reads like a press release.
Re: Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
#8Wouldn't a standard drill press accomplish the same thing, and be a lot cheaper?
Depending on your threat model, a drill isn't even the right tool. This will significantly complicate data recovery and render data where the drill impacts it destroyed, but it will in theory still be possible to decap/analyse platters or nand with a SEM microscope and reconstruct data off the surviving parts of the storage medium. The cost may not be worth it even to some state actors, but such a cost is peanuts to…
> They even let you watch it go in.
I wonder if/when there's a data destruction company that employs professional magicians, who swap out the drives from under you at some point, while you watch "your" drive going into the grinder, never the wiser.
Re: Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
#9If you happen to find yourself destroying SSDs, try not to make this mistake: https://i.imgur.com/XBbLQEQ.jpeg
I'm sorry to be an idiot—I can't tell if I'm looking at multiple views of one thing, or one view each of multiple things, or what. Is this just demonstrating that hard drives are commonly enclosed in oversized enclosures, so that it's easy to position the punch in a way that totally misses the actual electronics?
Those aren't hard drives, they're solid state drives in the SATA form factor which was originally designed for hard drives. SSDs are much more compact than HDDs, so the components are usually all bunched up at one side near the connectors and the rest is just air, thus punching a hole in them at random probably won't achieve anything. Punching a hole through the PCB might not destroy the data either depending on where exactly you hit it but it would at least make it difficult to recover.
Re: Hard drive, SSD puncher of physical media with 12 tons of pressure
#10As someone who hoards my own old USBs and hard drives, which I don’t think hold anything particularly interesting, this idea was violent at first. But yeah, I get it lol