Hard Drive Destruction Test (w/ video)

[project]

Call me paranoid, but I am experimenting with Fool-Proof methods to destroy my sensitive data should the need arise. Attempt #1: put a blackpowder/Mg charge inside my hard drive and see if I can shatter the platters.

Video: http://tramchase.com/blog/hard-drive-detonator-001

This attempt was unsuccessful, but some more designs are in the works -- want to try various explosives as well as chemical, electrical, and magnetic, most of which I've found on this here forum!

Further research up at http://tramchase.com/projects/hard-drive-detonator -- any and all feedback appreciated.

[Cindor]

I think thermite is the best choice to destroy a hard drive.

It produces lots of heat being able to disable you HD and there is no need of an explosion or detonation.

[sbovisjb1]

Encrypt it with PGP. Then get magnets and run it over the disk. Then pack the thermite around it and melt the harddrive. Best thing to do is use PGP.

[Cindor]

sbovisjb1 you just give an idea:
put inside the computer an electric magnet, to active it when needed and thermite to finish the job

[megalomania]

Thermite is legal is it not, meaning you don't need a fedgov license to use it? If you deny the storm troopers their prize (all the delicious evidence they think is on your HD) they will get angry (throw a tantrum) and slap extra charges on you like illegal posession of explosives. If you don't use explosives, they can't very well charge you with anything. If you are not extremely careful with the thermite you could end up burning your house down. They might charge you with attempted murder if criminals break in to steal your data and get singed in the process (if those criminals turn out to be fedgov stormtroopers).

What about a chemical treatment? What chemical would attack the surface of the platter? Would a chemical even be able to penetrate to the platter (if it is sealed etc)? Would data destruction be accomplished in a short enough time frame? I think the new gaming Raptor drive uses a transparent window over the platter. If the drive with sensitive information were stored in an external enclosure, you could rig a simple puncture system to pierce the glass, and drop the drive into a container of chemicals. The question is what chemical will dissolve a platter, and how long does it take?

[Hirudinea]

Just a thought, but if destorying a hard drive is so difficult, why not get rid of the hard drive, if you build a raid system using IDE to CF adapters, you could have 40-50 gigs of storage to keep your "sensitive" data (sure its not a huge ammount of storage but if you don't have a lot of video or pics it should do.)

Then when the police come knocking you yank out your CF cards, run them through a credit card shredder and dump the chips into a vat of strong acid. If your files are encrypted this should make recovering them a real pain in the ass, if they an be recovered at all, and of course no fire or explosion, just a a nasty smelling goo. :D

[NoltaiR]

While this is obviously a ridiculous thread posted by a supernoob, I am pleased that the wonderful invention of Thermite was mentioned.

So easy to make and so incredibly powerful. It would certainly do the job of destroying data... then again it's known for melting through concrete.

[Gunjack]

I heard about a way to wreck a hard drive by writing a program to bypass the maximum rpm and get it to go faster so it gets damaged by the high speeds.
It would be very easy to keep things ready for when it is needed and it can be used in seconds.
All that you would need is a program already resident on the hard drive.
Has anybody got more info on that?

[LibertyOrDeath]

Here are a few thoughts:

If your data is both secret AND important, then you'll want to have it backed up at all times. Obviously that presents a difficulty. An automatic destruction system should probably be capable of destroying both a main drive and a backup drive simultaneously.

If a hard drive is formatted/deleted or physically damaged and the federal pigs want the data that was on it, they have some pretty sophisticated methods at their disposal. To my knowledge, the primary tool used is magnetic force microscopy (MFM), a method which can scan the surface of a drive (or even just a fragment of it) and produce a picture of the bits.

First of all, merely deleting the data will certainly not work, as hard drive heads get ever-so-slightly misaligned each time a bit at a certain location is written or erased. Thus, when a bit is deleted by the head, a trace of it is generally left behind at the track edge. I've seen MFM images of this myself. Recovery of information from track edges is said to be very difficult, but why take a chance?

Encrypting the data is a good idea, but even after the data is encrypted it may also be left behind in unencrypted form at the track edges. Also, there's a chance that Big Brother secretly has the ability to break encryption methods available to us. Who knows what algorithms they've discovered and are keeping under wraps?

Because of these considerations, I would not trust explosives to physically destroy my hard drive if there were anything illegal on it. Fragments may remain that are large enough to be read by MFM.

Thermite would definitely do the trick, but it would also likely burn down your house unless your computer is on the concrete floor of a basement.

What about a chemical treatment? What chemical would attack the surface of the platter? Would a chemical even be able to penetrate to the platter (if it is sealed etc)? Would data destruction be accomplished in a short enough time frame? I think the new gaming Raptor drive uses a transparent window over the platter. If the drive with sensitive information were stored in an external enclosure, you could rig a simple puncture system to pierce the glass, and drop the drive into a container of chemicals. The question is what chemical will dissolve a platter, and how long does it take?This idea sounds promising, but perhaps a sealed glass containing the chemical rather than the drive would be preferable? That would prevent evaporation of the chemical bath and possible premature harm to internal computer components from vapors prior to use of the destruction method.

Maybe the most straightforward way of using a chemical attack would be to have quick-release hard drives with exposed platters (or maybe just covered with easily-removable plastic wrap to keep out dust) and a sealed vat of an appropriate chemical standing by. Upon an emergency, the drives would be yanked out by hand, the plastic wrap ripped off, and the drives immediately dumped into the vat.

As to which chemical would be good for etching the platter surface, there's a Wikipedia article on platter construction that mentions some interesting things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_platters

Platters are typically made using an aluminium or glass substrate. In disk manufacturing, a thin coating is deposited on both sides of the substrate, mostly by a vacuum deposition process called magnetron sputtering. The coating has a complex layered structure consisting of various metallic (mostly non-magnetic) alloys as underlayers optimized control of crystallographic orientation and grain size of the actual magnetic media layer on top of them, i.e. the film storing the bits of information. On top of it a protective carbon-based overcoat is deposited in the same sputtering process. In post-processing a nanometer thin polymeric lubricant layer is deposited on top of the sputtered structure by dipping the disk into a solvent solution...

I'm not a chemist, but I wonder if finding a chemical that can rapidly etch the polymeric lubricant, the carbon-based overcoat, and then the magnetic layer might be a problem. Others more knowledgeable than I am about such things can comment on that.

[nbk2000]

If the drives were in removable drive bays, you could pull them out, drop the drive cartridges into a big clay pot filled with thermite with a cardboard box buried in it (so the drives are below the level of the thermite, and light it up.

The thermite turns into molten iron, but doesn't drain out, turning the drives a into glass slag.

The important thing is to have enough thermite to completely submerge the drives once it's turned into molten iron. This way, there's NO part of the platter that isn't below the surface of the iron, possibly escaping total destruction.

Oh, and a cover to keep the flame from burning down the house. :p

There's a manufacturer of hard drives that have clear plastic covers so you can see the platters moving.

[ChippedHammer]

Thats if you get enough time to rip it open and ignite the thermite, if your going to get busted they do it quickly (eg, kick down the door and point guns at you).

The best thing to do would be to have a quantity of thermite located above the hard drive with a missile switch on the front of the PC leading to some sort of ignitor. It would take 2 seconds to flick and if your getting your door kicked down, potential house fires are the least of your worries :)

[Charles Owlen Picket]

Thats if you get enough time to rip it open and ignite the thermite, if your going to get busted they do it quickly (eg, kick down the door and point guns at you).


That is the whole issue (IMO)....how much time do you have? If you have a few seconds that's one issue, a few minutes; quite another. Physical destruction via a hammer or shooting the drive to perforate it will generally make the material unrecoverable as the platter needs to be flat and functional. The suggestion of a solenoid type of mechanism to start in motion a destructive process via an external button appears to be a good one!

[Skean Dhu]

The entire storage premise of a Hard disk is magnetic signals, So in theory all one would have to do is heat the platters above their curie point for a few seconds and all of the information would be destroyed as would the functionality of the disk.

Following that line of thought it would be possible to modify the cover so that a microwave oven magnetron was aimed at the platters and once given the right signal it would activate. This signal could be from either a keystroke combination or pressure switches linked to either the front door of the building the computer was in or the door to the room so when (presumably) your door gets kicked in the HDD gets fragged without your action. So even if they bust in while you are not present there is no damning evidence.

With the progression of HDDs the platters may not be constructed out of conductive materials for much longer, but presumably the storage media coating will still be, and will react similar to a CD/DVD in a microwave and in 5 seconds the entire disc is destroyed.

Another possible hurdle to overcome would be on desktop hard disks there are multiple platters, this could act as shielding for the microwaves and thus only the top platter would be destroyed. This may not actually occur but if it does it would be a fairly easy fix. To the best of my knowledge laptop HDDs are single platters due to size constraints, so I would imagine that you could easily mount one inside of a desktop without too much hassle. Or by mounting the magnetron in an end-on orientation so that the radiation is bounced between the platters.

[Keserian]

Just a quick note about legal issues. What they can do is hit you with a motion that states that you intentionally destroyed data once you found out about the raid. The court is then instructed to draw a negative inference about whatever you destroyed. In other words, you destroyed it for a reason.

Now, they can't convict on this inference, but it's enough to make it very difficult for your defense attorney to get you off. If it's a bench trial (No jury) then it won't be as hard. Judges tend to be influenced by cold, hard, facts more than by their gut feelings and emotions. Juries, on the other hand, are swayed more by personal appeals, the poor crying mother, the negative inference and smear mongering that you see in most court-rooms.

Also, as far as I know, Thermite isn't controlled by the Feds. It's used in some welding applications, and other industrial situations. On the other hand, what you do with the Thermite is likely to get you in trouble. Also, large flames with sparks are a really great way to get already twitchy police to shoot you. It doesn't take a lot to get cops with guns, who are performing a highly dangerous operation (entering a possible hostile building), to feel that their lives are in danger.

[User32]

Thermite would be a quick way to destroy the platers but having a system setup that is up to that task requires testing.

The best possible way to keep your sensitive data safe is to cover your tracks well enough not to put yourself in a situation where you'd have to deal with your doors being knocked down.

For some people that would prove harder than just melting the hard drives.

[Hirudinea]

If your comfortable with your security setup where you are (you know where all the entrances and exits in your house are, nobody can get in at any time without your knowledge) then use your "Work" computer as a terminal and make your main computer with all your data a server.

Set up your server in the same way NBK suggested...

into a big clay pot filled with thermite

The important thing is to have enough thermite to completely submerge the drives once it's turned into molten iron. This way, there's NO part of the platter that isn't below the surface of the iron, possibly escaping total destruction.

Connect your Terminal/Server via an internal network, keep your server in a locked, booby-trapped room, and have a "destruct" switch located by your computer.
The cops come, you hit the destruct switch, the server goes up like Mona Loua. The cops catch you in the crapper, they say "Where's the fucking server!" you say "In the Attic, sir!" (alway be nice to the police), they open the attic door, trigger the booby-trap, the thermite goes off and, well the cops get to glory in your fine data control methods. :cool:

[miech]

If you use a server, you will need to configure your computer in a way it doesn't store temporary data on it's hard drive. All the temporary files in the RAM will be cleared anyway, since those need a constant supply of electricity to store data.
Maybe using a so called thin client is a good idea. This is something like a graphics card with mouse, keyboard and ethernet interfaces. The actual computer is somewhere else, and the thin client only shows what you are doing, without storing data. If you use a server in i.e. Poland or Hungary, it will be very difficult for the cops to get permission to access your files, since the server isn't on US property. The only disadvantages are that you will need some IT skills to get it working properly and your 'PC' is running quite slow.

[beirut]

According to wikipedia:
The write head magnetizes a magnetic region by generating a strong local magnetic field nearby.

You could build a solenoid around the hard drive and run a high frequency alternating current through it. Assuming you have a strong enough current you would flash the hard drive with the magnetic field created inside the solenoid, and the metal components of the disc would begin to heat and melt by the skin effect. Essentially, you would be surrounding the drive with a small scale induction furnace.

[FireBomb]

Hey has anyone thought of using solid state storage. There are several newer drives along with a ton getting ready to some out soon that use extremely low latency solid state memory. Most of the ones you see now are in the 18 to 30 gig range but for most of us thats more than enough. All you would need to do is either if you have the time just delete the data. Since data stored in solid state memory is stored differently than magnetically. It's just a shit ton of transistors the only state they can be in is either on or off. So rather than removing the file flag from the file table like on a standard hard drive. It just turns all the transistors either on or off there is so ghost image left over once it's changed it is impossible to find out what state it was in before the change.

Another method would be to short out the transistors with a electrical charge again not hard to do. Then the only thing left would be a paperweight. All the transistors would have shorted out and for lack of a better word exploded.

While PGP encryption is very nice it is not totally secure all you have to do is take the encrypted data to a server farm which isn't too hard to do and run some nice software and even with a 2048 bit hex key they can decrypt all the data almost in real time if they have enough computers running in parallel. Believe me if the feds think you have something really bad they will build a server farm if they have to all they need is to call up someone like dell and order 1000 of their cheapest machines and there you go.

Oh also for the most part unless you have a marks generator not too hard to build it is very difficult to generate a strong enough elector magnetic field to destroy the data on a hard drive. So far the best method of destruction I would use is just plain HEAT. For the most part hard drive platters are made out of Aluminium or in some cases Glass or Ceramic coated with a ferrite compound. All needed to do is remove this compound which is electrostatic plating.

[beirut]

...Oh also for the most part unless you have a marks generator not too hard to build it is very difficult to generate a strong enough elector magnetic field to destroy the data on a hard drive. So far the best method of destruction I would use is just plain HEAT. For the most part hard drive platters are made out of Aluminium or in some cases Glass or Ceramic coated with a ferrite compound. All needed to do is remove this compound which is electrostatic plating.

I was thinking about using an explosively pumped flux compression generator. For most of us here on the forum it would be a much cheaper alternative to a Marx generator.

Edit: This would make it an EMP, rather than a conduction heater, but it would be just as effective in destroying the data.

[Imagination]

You could build a solenoid around the hard drive and run a high frequency alternating current through it.

You are forgetting something beirut...does Faraday cage mean something to you? Well, if you are to destroy the hdd with HF AC, then it will not work, maybe the hdd's surface will warm up a bit, but your data will be readable, smelly from the smoke, but readable. :) You have to use a not-really so strong electromagnet, with direct current, maybe change the polarity in 1-2 seconds...
You see, there is no way to shield the magnetic field, if there would be such a thing, we wouldnt use gas in the cars by now... And actually the data is stored/edited/removed by (electro)magnetic field...so they will dance as you sing...

[Toggle]

Just a quick note about legal issues. What they can do is hit you with a motion that states that you intentionally destroyed data once you found out about the raid. ...


If you are worried about the legal fallout, just keep all sensitive data on an encrypted partition. You don't need to worry about getting to a switch in time and you can't be charged with anything for not divulging your "private documents".

There are programs to wipe data by overwriting a file instead of just marking it as deleted. These should work fine against cops, but not the Feds. Governments use a tunneling electron microscope to examine the hard drive and recover data.

[Imagination]

Anyway, if we're talking about software(the less fun) security, then truecrypt would be my choice... it creates a temporary drive which you can close by one keystroke... and it supports AES triple DES and all the good stuff with explanations, and the best thing about it is, that it's free...

[rayman]

most of the methods here are great at slowing the gov down at getting the data, the only real way to way to STOP them from getting your data is to totaly destroy the data, the melting of the hdd is the only option with merit IMHO

the only real question to me at this time is the amount of thermite needed to melt the drive totaly, and how to protect the surronding house from the effects of heat

How its set off is not as important eather, there are hundreds ways to start the reaction from cell phone activation to motion detection, what alot of people forget is that the police can shut off power to a house as they start there raid so you will not have time to activate your wipe drive programs that may or may not work,

thermite with several ways to ignite it sounds like the way to go to remove your data from existence

again IMHO

[Imagination]

Well, if the encrypting which the government uses to secure data from unauthorized individuals is not fare enough for you, and if you doubt the "slowly" alternating magnetic field too(maybe you think the bits will just get weaker but readable in a highly sensitive machine that the feds probably have, and probably you're right)....

Well, then the thermite should do the trick... I would suggest a steel tank(min. 2cm thick walls), which I'd place the HDD in... Then I'd use "glass cotton"(or whatever you call it there, it's in the sides of the refrigerator...really good thermal isolator, no chance to melt glass with a small amount of thermit...) from outside of the tank, just to be sure mama's carpet wont get hurt ;) This should do as a melting chamber...

Almost forgot, don't touch the glass cotton too much...after a few minutes you'll understand...use gloves...So the last thing would be a mini-chimney??:) I would suggest steel pipe...maybe I would sink a part of the chimney in water...closer to the chamber the better...

I suppose you don't need too much of thermite to melt a HDD,as it's mostly from Aluminium, and Al it melts at approx 659 C... And everyone here knows what temperatures can be accomplished with thermite:)... Oh yeah, and I definately wouldn't cover the HDD with thermite, shortage is one thing, but you have to cool the HDD somehow....so I would put the thermite in a paper box over the chamber or something like that....

Almost forgot, be a bit negative oxygen balanced, so you dont get too much gas(O2) product... I think 200-300g would do the job quite well....but if you're interested i can get an old HDD and try it for you :) Maybe take some photos of the "efficiency" :)

[Charles Owlen Picket]

I have been reading this with interest for weeks but I keep thinking that there are but two methods advisable. The first; using a solenoid type device to physically crush the drive at a switch-level. The other being the use of a RAM drive kept alive via a UPS; again at switch level speed.

But be that as it may; the issue also of the presence of the person [at the time] need(ed) to destroy the data! If such data exists, I would count on a "black-bag" job to remove that to begin with. If software encryption is even considered; it better be pretty strong encryption!
At the time of Phil Zimmerman's original trial (PGP trial) the US government was very confident that it could crack encryption at the 1024 bit level within a few hours if national security was at stake and computers released from their previous tasks. Imagine what it can do today (years and years later) ???

[cadaver]

As far as using a solenoid to "crush" the drive, unless the pressure was immense, then the data would remain.

However, if you had the top plate of the crusher filled with thousands of spikes, effectively covering 95% of the area, then you could destroy the data.

Coating the spikes with a caustic solution on the way through (punch through a plastic bag of caustic gel or even a gelled form of HCl) should do the trick with no danger of burning your house down.

This would require much less engineering difficulties since the EM need not be so powerful as to crush the platters into oblivion.

[ChippedHammer]

You could always have a vat of HCl or H2SO4 under your drive, It will take the feds kicking down your door a while to figure that something is up (fumes?) and even then they would be unable to do anything (open computer and fish out the drive is not something they do).

[cadaver]

You could always have a vat of HCl or H2SO4 under your drive,

The problem with these solutions is that of containing the gases until such times as you are ready to destroy your drives. Even small amounts of HCL or H2SO4 vapor would cause rapid computer destruction due to corrosion.

[Sturmgewehr77]

Here's a little idea I came up with awhile ago. If you have a server with not-so-shareable data, Create a small metal box, store the precious HDD in it, with whatever components you see fit, I'd probably recommend just essentials, and bury the wire to your house and pack in a container of thermite predominately above the HDD and cover it up. Feds break in, you flip switch (or press a remote button), HDD fries underground, and no one is the wiser. If they find it, say it was old and you disposed of it and buried it. theres no way you could do that at the same time they are watching you and searching the premises. But there are bugs that I also thought of, voltage drop of wires traveling whatever distance away from the house, AKA components cannot function properly. And the traces of it being connected to your house. Anyways, just my 2 cents.

[Hirudinea]

Here's a link for the ultimate in hard drive destruction, it just takes a while...

http://www.hackaday.com/2008/06/11/drive-slagging/

[inkhead]

The idea of burying the hard drive is a very bad one. Especially if it's not SSD. With no air the drive will die shortly. They do have air holes for a reason, however the heat of running in a box underground will cause read write failures in a matter of days.

Trust me I've tried it ;-)

[Skean Dhu]

While not expedient, if you have foreknowledge of a raid, if your hard disk is multi platter you can dissassemble it into it's individual platters and there is no way for the data to ever be read, because once the platters are unorganized there is no way to re-assemble them in such a way that the reference data for the read/write head is valid.

If you know how to recover data you know how to lose it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUyxIG0xsBg

[fluoroantimonic]

In my opinion the best way to be sure you secret data is safe would be to save it in an external HD that is already in the a crucible surrounded by thermite.

Then a piezoelectric igniter could start the ignition mix even with the power off.

Also it would be good to have some kind of automatic switch that is carefully designed to not go off on accident but still work if you happen to be out of the house when they raid it. Not sure quite how that would work, but I'm sure it could be done.

And what the hell would someone have that was THAT secret?

[iHME]

Apparently Hackaday.com made a small article about this with rather good vids about the process of burning the hdd.

Link to Hack a Day article (http://hackaday.com/2008/09/16/how-to-thermite-based-hard-drive-anti-forensic-destruction/)

[Wallybanger]

I'm kinda curious as to why you guys are so concerned about destroying your drives? unless you are keeping photo/video evidence of illegal activities, or kiddy porn, I would think traces of energetic materials, chemicals and the discussions on here would be a bigger problem. Here in the Kommunist republic of Canuckistan it's not illegal to have books/information on energetics but it COULD possibly be used to prove intent.

I'm no HD specialist but so far the big electromagnet sounds like the best idea. Here's a spreadsheet for electromagnet design. http://www.coolmagnetman.com/coildata.xls I bet you could build a pretty powerful magnet that could be run from the wall outlet or a UPS.

http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Workshop/advice/coils/index.html

[Alexires]

Darik's Boot and Nuke.

"Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction."

Probably will take too long for the purposes of this thread, but if you were using a small HDD for your OS and wanted to make sure it was clean, it would be of use.

http://www.dban.org/

[DarkWrath]

I've used it a couple of times and I must agree it does a good job. I suppose the data can be recovered , but not through any common software method.

The problem with it is the time it takes to wipe a drive. For a 80GB IDE drive it took almost 3 hours. Not exactly everyone's idea of a quick wipe.

But why bother with that when a tunneling microscope can still read the data? The surface of the platter is extremely sensible to abrasion and scratching. Even tissue paper pressed over the platter while it's spinning will make the surface unreadable.

It would be simple to design a rig that would insert diamond dust or other abrasive powders through the ventilation hole on the side of the drive , and if the platters are spinning at top speed it won't take more than a few seconds to render most of the data unreadable.

[Kaydon]

I don't know. In a recent issue of Popular Science (I believe.. I get both Science and Mechanics) they put a hard drive in water, oil, dirt and so on and so forth and were still able to recover 95% of the data. Although they said the company that did the recovering, had it been a person wanting this data back it would've put a $1,200 dent in their wallet.