The Most EFFECTIVE Ways To Destroy A Harddrive 

What really would have been interesting is to see if the data is still present on the platter when you replace the Main PCB of the HDD. They are often interchangeable

My mans really microwaved and toasted a Hard drive 💀

Drilling through hard drives is how we destroyed drives to federal standards at the recycle/refurb warehouse. It was a shame to see so many rare working MFM drives just destroyed.

Harddrive are actually really resistent to shocks when powered off. However when powered on, theyre super sensitive. Hence why laptop drives often die when people bump the machine

That was fantastic content. Make part 2 and get it to recovery company.

One of the better ways to truely delete the data (apart from shattering the internal platters) is to heat them past their curie temperature, which permanently demagnetizes them.

The magnets would work, but only if you used them on the magnetic discs themselves. Because like you did it, they are protected from the metal shell like in a Faraday cage.

what about a bulk tape eraser? it's a powerful electromagnet meant to erase magnetic media (casettes, VHS, etc) in a matter of seconds. I believe it's what the pros use.

Looking forward to seeing the data recovery results!

I'd love to see part 2! I have a couple of dead HDDs that I've kept, hoping I can afford to recover the data someday. Your video will either give me confidence or make me doubt sending them to a professional data recovery service.

I love the fact that you push tech so far just to see if it can hold up. Love the content!

Well if you let it sit on a thousand pounds of C4 and set it off I don't think there is anything left to sent it to the date recovery center.

The reason the HDD survived at 1:54 is because it has a seal between the actual mechanics and the outside which makes it waterproof. Maybe the board too? and also the hard drive still worked because they're sealed to prevent dust from corrupting data.

I feel bad for his victims. Because cmon. Even if its HDD its still have 1TB. Why you didn't pickup like 120 or 300GB drives :(

No hard drives were harmed in the making of this video

2:20 man said frozen water 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Try putting the hard drive into a Mri scanner, and see if it survives the extreme magnetic 🧲 fields. Thanks for sharing 😊

9:23 did i actually just get rickrolled by an hdd😂🤣🙄

2 methods that will render all data unreadable. 1) sharp blow(s) to the spindle with a hammer. This will shatter the discs inside without making much of a mess. 2) take it to the shooting range. Lead traveling at roughly 1000fps should be enough to compromise the data.

Bro really dated a hard drive to destroy it💀

That proposal to the HDD was just fantastic, I couldn't stop laughing until it devolved into a wild coughing XD

they only way to make 100% sure on one can ever get data from these is to over wright the data 32 plus times then grind the platters into dust

One of the ways we destroyed the hard drives at my old workplace because we dealt with sensitive data was my boss would disassemble them and then he'd give the parts to me. And my favorite way to spend the afternoon was drilled pressing the disk platters. And setting the inclosures on fire. I can guarantee you after being drilled, put in saltwater, and set on fire. That data was gone.

Thermal paste essence, that made my day🤣I love it

Man as a PC lover, you destroying those hdds really hit me.

Bro is able to go to really long lengths to entertain us. And I respect that

I use hard drive platters as drink coasters

To avoid any chance of data recovery, one would need to make the platters dissapear. So, after drilling, leave them in acid for months. If no acid, then get on a boat and throw them one by one, across large distances, to the sea. Deepness to hide them, and salt water may help the corrosion.

He finally did it

Poor hard drives😢 1 like to mryeester = 1 prayer

Excellent video. I loved it. Keep it up just like this!

5:35 “Try to love it” *GET GIFTS THAT LOVE*

6:00 HDD rejected you lol

Tbh the toaster was probably the most dangerous one, I was surprised he didn’t pop a breaker the moment he pushed it down

Thank you, gonna use this in the future

"a Linus special" I'm dying 😂

For the freezing one, thats actually a way to make tempremental hard drives OK for a period of time.

Microvawe was actually not effective, because while it did kill the circuitboard, all the data is still on the platter and can be recovered. Same goes for the water and the toaster, the internals might not be damaged. Galium method also wouldn't work for direct platter contact an any drive because every harddrive has a protective and magnetic layer over the platter witch would stop the reaction, alltho oppening the drive by itself will kill it. Dropping it will kill the R/W heads, but the platter is good and data is recoverable. The vinyil one was funny, put it in a CD/DVD for some funny noises (i tested it) Might be fun if you sealed the "breathing" hole and just continiued using it to see how long it lasts.

My go to has always been opening the drives, scratching the crap out of them and then bending the platters befote cutting them with an angle grinder. You may say overkill, but i say effective. (Also fun fact laptop hard drives sometimes use a brittle material for the platter, I've had one shatter in my hand while just trying to bend it slightly by hand)

James Bond: Dang it it’s encrypted Criminal: nah I just toasted it

I have a better idea: don't do it unless absolutely necessary. If the hard drive it's not damaged, it's still a free storage to use. Just buy an external enclosure for it and your good to go. If you really need to wipe all the data running a few times something like: dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/$DISC should do the job. But if you really need to physically destroy it, use a furnace and melt the platters.

i mean you could just sand the disks with sandpaper

3:30 we pop tart this toaster strudel had me dying

Yes send it to a company. I recommend drivesavers, plz do it,love your content

I would love to see if a recovery company can save the data on the harddrives.

Hey man, I've seen you clean components with alc. But how about testing if they function in alc? (My dumb idea at 3 am)

I love the thermal paste essence candle

The microwave test was done in the most dangerous way possible lmao Just all safety precautions absent like not doing the test outdoors, not having heat resisting gloves, and having nothing to put out a fire nearby on hand too The fire after the sparks might have been a shock and unexpected, but surely if you know that metal sparks in microwave, that fire is a risk in this experiment, but it was was still done indoors with no safety precautions at all Says not to try this at home; proceeds to try it at home

Day 2# of asking to cool a cpu with a penny made before 1982

Me: smashes it onto the floor

There's a gun range next to the BBQ place here. If we have drives which need to go, we take them over to the range and fire off a few rounds at lunch time. Highly effective and very therapeutic.

+1 for data recovery expert video

Man don't you hate it when you accidentally microwave your hard drive 😔

Now I wonder what would happen if you only microwave the disk platter

OMG CANT WAIT FOR THE FOLLOW UP VID

Genius way to get subscribers, we're already 7:40 in, so we probably subscribe (even tho i might forget)

The only true way is to first overwrite the data. However many times you want. Then fully disassemble the hdd, using a torch on the platters and then grinding them up into a powder. You also have to burn the PCB. The rest doesn't matter but I am sure big tech will also destroy the read headers just in case there is some secret hidden memory in there.

I would love to see what recovery companies think of them. I was actually wondering that while watching the video. I liked and subbed just for that

Would like to see a part 2 for this video!

When he microwaved it and toasted it, it was like the “dinner is ready!”

New subscriber you have gained me. Yt recommended me. Already like your content cheers mate.😊

i used to work in a data repair company and we had these contracts with the government to destroy hardrives we shreded the platers in to dust and then ran the dust in a magnetizer demagnetizer.

The love poetry is something else ❤

Most creative RU-vidr I know

Fantastic content.

The finest destruction CMU has produced since battle bots

ooohhh I cant wait for the next vid of what drives survived.

in case anyone is curious, AWS datacenters use machines called degaussers which are machines with very powerful magnets that scramble the data, then they get smashed by a mangleR (yes its called a mangleR) which essentially bends and smashes the disks to pieces :)

5:36 Bro's romancing on a hard drive 💀💀💀

You have a mil subs come on dude is that the best mic you can get

I found your channel on a reels and I'd be curious to see if any of them at 8/10 made it if you didn't already do that video? That was a good video brother.

Dude you are so underrated

Bro done preparing us for the worst consequences FBI got nothing on this guy online

This was very interesting I would like to see what happens to the broken hard drives if you send them to a data recovery professional

I work in a place for hard drive destruction and we use a hydrolic piston with a tip to puncture a hole into the circuit. Only recently it broke so we resorted to sledge hammeing them in... like full on mangle them up

Quick formatting several times in different formats & cluster sizes, then wipe free spaces.

Take your drives to a junk yard, put the drives in the auto shredder. NSA has something like that.

1:27 Yeah my PC runs cyberpunk 2077. 💀

"Have I mentioned you shouldn't do this at home?" Me who has already done all of these things: "Wait. I wasn't?"

Hammer nuff said..

I crafted wind chimes out of platters and chimes luckily the platters seem to be metallic since they didnt explode if you visit a very specific building you may be able to see that item

Definitely would like to see these sent off for data recovery.

I think it was that paper sticker that caught fire 1:37

On the unplugging one, you should give it a write instruction and unplug the sata cable. It should get stuck sending power to writing if the drives logic isn't the most reliable.

That disc on the turntable looks like the 45s we had as kids!

7:08 "a Linus special..." Should've included that one clip where he dropped a server hard drive on the floor

We put them in a hydralic press and mash them. The platters bend or splinter and the frame is bent. We use this when we suspect that information of patients has been stored on them.

Yes, microwave it. I had an old pair of leather gloves that were too big. So I sprayed them with water, put them in the microwave oven for a few seconds. This shrunk the gloves down to the perfect size. LOL

the stone crusher machine is a sure win...., another one is a 3422°C furnace... the combination of both is the champ

interesting, the side effect of destroying the drive in the microwave can provide some very convincing incentive not to try to recover the drive (assuming that by some miracle it did not wipe the platters too)

The fact that this guy did it indoors too

Man olease make the follow up video I would LOVE to see that

Man out here doing real science aka. toasting hard drives

I want you to blend it, in some very powerful bender :)

The reason a car doesn't work is bc the rubber tires distribute the pressure. If a car had metal wheels like a train, you'd see a fair bit more damage probably, but even so the pressure isn't that insane. Speaking of trains tho... (probably shouldn't try it tho, wouldn't wanna be liable for causing a derailment) it'd be interesting to see like how much it takes to crush it with a hydraulic press tho, I'm sure there's some channels who wouldn't mind helping out in finding out the answer to that lol As far as the microwave and water goes, you've definitely fried the supporting hardware, but I wonder if the disk itself is still ok? A professional could probably transplant the disk with new supporting hardware to recover the data if needed I'd imagine, so it'd be interesting to see just how much the disk itself was messed up by the fields in the microwave. Definitely interested in that followup! I'd bet the toaster warped the disk, I think that would be probably one of the most effective ways. The platter going above a certain temp should make it lose the ability to store magnetic charges, and warping it would make it further just unable to be spun, so I think heat is really the way to go. Jabbing some holes in it with a soldering iron would probably be super effective lol The reason regular magnets don't work, is because the harddrive uses magnets a fraction of a millimeter away from the disk, so you either need something really strong or really close. That's why dropping a (older) harddrive can kill it, the disk can bump into that magnetic head while spinning and take out a huge gouge. Modern drives can detect the freefall and will park the head away from the disk and stop the spinning to help avoid damage tho

Underrated.

These all awesome, but most of it not wreck the data on the platter. The sure way: sand the platter, spin up and give it a good tap, and the platter shatters

I would love to see the pro’s trying to recover the data.

I wonder if you change out the the board after microwaving it, if you can still read it.

his motherboard was toast 🤣