[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by theducks

There are quite a few 'drive wipe' utilities. (Peter) Norton Utilities (DOS) had one.

I used to use my older, small drive for Swap. The problem is I now have more RAM that those drives

So my 'home' drive destruction method is a 1/4 drill bit in the drill press, thru the drive body in a couple of places.

This was not a heavy duty (professional recovery) proof destruction. The nearby data center had a drive destroyer. A machine the literally punched the drive motor-spindle THRU the case, shattering the platters. Others have Drive shredders (think: Paper Shredder on Steroids'). Silicon valley High Tech takes data (trade secrets) security seriously

I am reminded of this article from the early 00s.

At this small rural hospital, when IT staffers decommission old PCs, they’re careful to destroy all the data on the hard drives, says an IT pilot fish there.

“Having no access to a regular disk-wipe system, we would always take the hard drive out of the PC and into the room with the magnetic resonance imaging machine,” fish says.

“An MRI machine is primarily a huge electromagnet, so simply walking into the room with the drive would scramble the bits.”

But one day, a relatively new PC tech can’t get the case off an old PC to remove the hard drive. “He thought that if taking the hard drive near the MRI would clean it, then surely taking the entire computer in there would serve the same purpose,” says fish.

So the tech loads the PC onto a cart and heads for Radiology, where he enlists the help of the MRI tech in rolling the cart into the room.

“Bad idea,” fish says. “The PC was just sitting on top of the cart, and when they got to within 10 feet of the MRI machine’s aperture, the PC started to slide.

“It picked up speed, then literally flew off the cart, crashing into the opening where a patient would lie during an exam.”

There are gouges in the MRI machine. The legs of the cart have been smashed. The PC’s case looks like a crumpled fender. And the stunned PC and MRI techs are just glad they weren’t in the way when PC and cart took off.

“We tried to get the PC out of the magnet without turning off the MRI, because turning it off and back on and recalibrating it would take three days and cost a bundle,” fish says.

“We wrapped it with duct tape, tied three thick ropes to it, then enlisted 12 large men from maintenance to try to pull it out.”

No luck. When they pull, the PC floats in the opening, but they can’t drag it out.

“Yes, we had to turn the MRI off,” says fish. “It took three days and support folks from the vendor had to be flown in to restart it. Luckily we were insured for loss of business.

“And we bought a disk-wipe system.”