On Thursday 13 January 2005 04:25, mike hoy wrote: > If somebody wanted to completely destroy a harddrive or flash drive so > that no data whatsoever could ever be extracted from it how would they > go about doing that? Open it and then incinerate the media at a high temperature. For rotating magnetic media, the high temperature does several non-reversable things. First, it causes the oxide to oxidise much, much more (hence the need to "open it" before burning). Secondly, the platter material (metal or glass) will deform. And thirdly, and residual magnetism in the platter material is significantly lessened (because the high heat enables the individual atoms to alter their orientation). For solid-state media (e.g.., compact flash), the material is oxidised (and undergoes other chemical changes in exposure to the open air) and physically deformed. For either type, exposing the media to a blowtorch should be sufficient. Too bad neither Ben Avery nor the Scottsdale Gun Club permit the use of anything other than paper targets. A couple of .45-sized holes would do pretty good, too. -- Ed Skinner, ed@flat5.net, http://www.flat5.net/ --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss