How to Destroy a Hard Drive! - Part 2 | Bang Goes the Theory | Series 6 | BBC Studios 

I have to admit, I was fairly confident that smashing the computer wouldn't do anything. The computer itself would protect the platters. Flash memory is notable for being very hard to beat up as well. I must confess, though, that learning that some thin drives, such as those used in laptops, had glass platters was an interesting bit of knowledge gained.

It obvious that the tractor and sledge hammer wouldn't do anything, It barely touched the hard drive.

it's so easy to destroy a hard drive ; it's simply grind with a grinding machine , it becomes as iron sheet ; have a nice weekend !

why did you post part 2... 2 years before part 1?

Pretty damn obvious it doesn't matter what you do with the Electronics, the Platters is where you need to get 'medieval' with if you're talking about spindle drives but with SSD's or memory sticks, then you'd better take a shredder to the PCB or a good pair of scissors. If you want to be sure.

I've seen a video made by Google in one of their data centers and the method of choice for "data deletion" was a hidraulic spike trough the platters. :)

Hmm - it was obvious the smashing of the whole computer wouldn't do anything, UNLESS you hit in the location where the harddrive was - but even then, you'll still need to hit it directly - in the case of flash/ssd drives, they will be fine if they have no internal battery, if there is no electric source simply dropping into water won't do anything, drying it out is enough to get it working again - zapping it does far more damage then water (a power surge for instance is enough to stop memory in a PC from working aka corrupting it, unless you have a surge protector)

The simplest measures are never shown. Open the case and remove the disc. Done. Does not take long. Or what if you simply remove the entire driver card on the bottom.

Why did they drive over and sledgehammer the damn CASING instead of the disk itself ?:P

you left the entire case on during the sledgehammer version.

Theoretically you can still use electron microscopes to find the data

Are they making this because of the guy who threw his hard drive with 7500 bitcoins on a landfill.

Destroy data? dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda (or any other device mount point) it's free, it works and impossible to recover. But, you need to boot the puter off linux, from an usb pen is good.

i was always told to either use scrambling software. or drill holes in it.

Can We recover data from a low level formatted(zero written) Sd card?

Blowtorch or chemical bath. :D

Simply dismantle the HDD, remove the platens, and smash or cut them by repeated bending*. You also get the chance to salvage the 2 neodymium magnets that are used to drive the RW stylus back and forth. It's faster and more satisfying this way, than the ridiculous lengths to which this typically dumbed-down BBC "science" programme employed. Which is a shame, since all of the presenters are, in their own rights, highly qualified individuals as they have proven in more recent programmes, such as Liz Bonnin's Animal Odd Couples. Well worth watching. *obviously not necessary for glass platens, which was news to me as well.

This is torture to Dell optiplexes

Use a microwave for seven through fifteen seconds on high and it will be unrecoverable

Let's see how he does with an SSD.......

just open it and expose it to the air.