Isnt this just an arbor press?

[hopper68]

Cheaper than your arbor press with the capacity to do more at once.

Strongway Hydraulic Shop Press — 12-Ton | Hydraulic Presses| Northern Tool + Equipment

[video=youtube;6o189u1iRNg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o189u1iRNg[/video]

or if you want to spend big money

[video=youtube;je0uLWfKh4U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je0uLWfKh4U[/video]

 

[Woobie]

FWIW, that is exactly what it is. Just an arbor press. I can't believe someone is selling a 3T arbor for $1k. There's a sucker born every minute, I guess.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001...rbor+press&dpPl=1&dpID=411zN4QORYL&ref=plSrch

Thats the first result on an Amazon search. $309 + free shipping. I'm sure you could do better.

 

[OutdoorDad]

Small tap with awl.
Drive self tapping screw through the drive case as far as you can.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

A couple in each should do the job. And keep most dust out of your area.

 

[Dirtebiker]

I have LOTS to do, so taking them apart isnt efficient. (presently I have 4 paper boxes full)

I WAS smashing them with a framing hammer before throwing them in the e-waste bin, (an outside firm grinds up our e-waste) but then a busybody hobbyist employee saw them and decided hammer strikes to the circuit boards and denting the platter cover wasnt enough and "somebody could cobble together a drive from good parts and get info off of them." He took that info to a managing partner (who isnt a techie) and scared the crap out of him with FUD. Forget the fact that these drives dont hold proprietary info, and they are stored in a recycle bin INSIDE our facility. (not out in the dumpster behind the building where the public can go)

He found one drive that "we" didnt smash and called us out to the partner as inept and irresponsible. The drive? It wasnt one of ours. An employee brought their drive in from home to recycle it. And although he was able to recover "significant data" after working on one for 16 hours, he kept forgetting to bring that data in to us for inspection. Imagine that.

So since I dont want to drill them, (too messy) and I dont have time to manually deconstruct them or run a disk wiper against them, I'm going to go this route to warp the platters and bind the bearings.

And I proposed a Barett 50 to destroy them, but my boss declined.

Just wipe them with like, you know, a cloth or something. Worked great for Hitlery!

 

[Cameramonkey]

Apparently reading comprehension is not my friend. Maybe you should mention to the boss that said busy-body does not have a heavy enough work load.

Would breaking the SATA/SAS/SCSI/IDE connector with some needle nose pliers disable it enough for the busy-body?

ETA: went back and read your posts again. If a framing hammer smash isn't good enough for this person then breaking the connector certainly will not. It sounds like you have a person problem more than a hard drive problem.

No that would be the equivalent of taking the carburetor off a small engine to keep someone from using it. They just have to find another carburetor from the same engine and they're back in business.

That is one of the steps I was taking to destroy them .

 

[churchmouse]

FWIW, that is exactly what it is. Just an arbor press. I can't believe someone is selling a 3T arbor for $1k. There's a sucker born every minute, I guess.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001...rbor+press&dpPl=1&dpID=411zN4QORYL&ref=plSrch

Thats the first result on an Amazon search. $309 + free shipping. I'm sure you could do better.

Bought my Arbor press for $159..............20 years ago.....

 

[foszoe]

Vinegar bath followed be used as a bullet stop on home pistol range followed by dishwasher cycle on pots sanitizer cycle

 

[Tanfodude]

Any cheap demagnitizer? It should do the trick.

 

[rhino400]

I use one of these at work to destroy HDD.
10 Ton Benchtop Hydraulic Shop Press | Princess Auto
Works like a charm. Granted it appears I destroy a lot less drives then you. But I just store bad or old drives in a locked cabinet until it's worth my time. And then I press them. If you get a press that you put attachments on it's even better. I can attach a small spike to mine and drive it straight through the platter with ease.

 

[Cameramonkey]

And to be clear the young man is very bright. However much of his knowledge is theoretical with not so much a foundation in reality.

COULD somebody go to all that trouble and recover data? Absolutely is it worth their time and effort given the lack of sensitive customer files on those drives? Not really.

 

[Hop]

That 2nd URL is the exact thing corporate sent me to "crush hard drives" that wouldn't spin up. Forget it. It doesn't have the leverage to punch through a server type drive. You'd need a much longer handle &/or a way to bolt it to a heavy table. I hung from that ~1' long handle and barely dented the drives. I then took the drives home and easily punched through one using my 12 ton hydraulic press. Even that was too hard and not fun enough. I destroyed my rest using my suppressed .45.

 

[OutdoorDad]

And to be clear the young man is very bright. However much of his knowledge is theoretical with not so much a foundation in reality.

COULD somebody go to all that trouble and recover data? Absolutely is it worth their time and effort given the lack of sensitive customer files on those drives? Not really.

Ok. Then easy.

Black sharpie.

Write "DEGAUSED" on the side.

Leave one in the with no writing on it for him to find.
When he does, take it to the break room and put it in the microwave for 15 seconds.

After it cools, write "DEGAUSED" on it and throw it in the box with the others.

 

[chezuki]

We do that. The busybody grabbed them from the bin we leave them in for the recyclers to come pick up. I have to disable them before they leave my control.

The shred company should be able to provide secure media shred bins to store them until pickup.

 

[Cameramonkey]

That 2nd URL is the exact thing corporate sent me to "crush hard drives" that wouldn't spin up. Forget it. It doesn't have the leverage to punch through a server type drive. You'd need a much longer handle &/or a way to bolt it to a heavy table. I hung from that ~1' long handle and barely dented the drives. I then took the drives home and easily punched through one using my 12 ton hydraulic press. Even that was too hard and not fun enough. I destroyed my rest using my suppressed .45.

But how did that unit fare for run of the mill consumer desktop and laptop drives? Or did you test it with those?

Maybe I'll spring for the triple cost 5 ton.

And I know of the old school drives you speak of. I wont be destroying those this way. There are few of those, and add to the confusion that they are all part of RAID5, arrays so good luck mixing and matching the drives to figure out which drives go with which arrays and how many drives were in each. (after you figure out what kind of controller they were attached to)

 

[Hop]

It didn't work much better for regular drives. Using the pointed tip it would compress the drive enough to crack the platter but it never penetrated all the way through. Maybe with a longer handle and securely mounted to a sturdy table. A 230 gr .45 was far more impressive.

We use killdisk then store the certificates on a network share. Limits our liability for lost hipaa or pii data.
How to erase hard drive by Active@ KillDisk? Low Level Disk Format & Disk Sanitizer.

 

[Cameramonkey]

We used to use a rig with dban on it, to write out 2-6 drives at a time. But given the size of drives today, we just dont have the time or resources to wait half a day or more for a drive to wipe. No Hippa or industry sensitive stuff here. Mostly a few word docs in the desktop folders and pictures of their kids.

And a cracked/bound/warped platter would be enough for our needs. There just isnt anything THAT worthwhile on a drive to a thief except maybe emails in an OST, but still nothing juicy worth putting the extracted platters into a specialized NSA-type reader to extract it.


Given that there is no sure fire way short of $5k, Im thinking I might see about setting up an arrangement with the recycler to talk to us when they arrive so they can take immediate possession as they leave, or allow us to hand deliver the drives to their facility separate from our bin that gets picked up.

Thanks everyone. INGO rocks!

 

[AmmoManAaron]

If you have a place to do it outside...a gas mask and an arc welder?

 

[rvb]

Need to get a hard drive destruction device. Drill press is a no go due to the fact I dont want metal shavings and toxic dust from circuit boards in my office space.

what is toxic about drilling a HDD? Even the solders are mostly all lead free now. I'll talk to our techs and ask. We drill into PCBs all the time during development to cut traces or add vias. There's lots of toxic stuff used in PCB manufacturing, but I don't think there's a drilling risk. I don't think there's anything toxic about the platters themselves...

Add a shopvac and most shavings will never hit the floor.

-rvb

 

[Cameramonkey]

what is toxic about drilling a HDD? Even the solders are mostly all lead free now. I'll talk to our techs and ask. We drill into PCBs all the time during development to cut traces or add vias. There's lots of toxic stuff used in PCB manufacturing, but I don't think there's a drilling risk. I don't think there's anything toxic about the platters themselves...

Add a shopvac and most shavings will never hit the floor.

-rvb

I had a rig all imagined in my mind, including an enclosure to hold the drive and capture ALL the shavings, even with the shop vac exhausting outside. Then I realized I was appearing to overthink/overengineer.

 

[Thegeek]

Have you contacted Omnisource? Might be able to work out a deal that they can have them for free if guaranteed to be shredded. Give them a sealed box, they'll toss the whole box in the shredder/separator.