[Beowulf] [EXTERNAL] Re: Data Destruction

[Jörg Saßmannshausen]

Dear all,

back at a previous work place the shredder did come to our place and like Jim 
said: loud, not much to look at other than a heap of shredded metal and 
plastic the other end. 

There is an active volcano around right now:
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/vulkanausbruch-auf-la-palma-lavastrom-fliesst-in-den-atlantik-a-9b86cd64-d9b6-4566-9a41-06a1c0ac4a47?
jwsource=cl
(Sorry, German text but the pictures are quite spectacular)
I think the only flipside is that usually the volcano does not come to you! :D

Melting it all down is a good idea from the data destruction point of view. 
However, it makes it much more difficult to separate the more precious 
elements later on. Here taking out the platters first and manually disassemble 
the rest might be a better way forward. You can shredder the platters and 
recycle them and recycle the rest as require. Ok, I take off my chemists hat. 
:D 

All the best

Jörg

Am Mittwoch, 29. September 2021, 20:00:08 BST schrieb Lux, Jim (US 7140) via 
Beowulf:
> There are special purpose drive shredders - they'll even come out to your
> facility with such a device mounted on a truck. It's not as exciting as you
> might think. Throw stuff in, makes horrible noise, done.
> 
> For entertainment, the truck sized wood chipper used when clearing old
> orchards is much more fun. Another unit rips the tree out of the ground and
> drops it into the giant feed hopper on top. Entire lemon or avocado trees
> turned into mulch in a very short time.
> 
> This isn't the one I saw, but it's the same idea, except horizontal feed.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCdmO6WvBYk
> 
> 
> We had a lengthy discussion on Slack at work (JPL) about ways to destroy
> drives - melting them in some sort of forge seems to be the most fun,
> unless you have a convenient volcano with flowing lava handy.
> 
> On 9/29/21, 8:47 AM, "Beowulf on behalf of Ellis Wilson"
> <beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org on behalf of ellis at ellisv3.com> wrote:
>     On 9/29/21 11:41 AM, Jörg Saßmannshausen wrote:
>     > If you still need more, don't store the data at all but print it out
>     > on paper and destroy it by means of incineration. :D
> 
>     I have heard stories from past colleagues of one large US Lab putting
>     their HDDs through wood chippers with magnets on the chipped side to
>     kill the bits good and dead.  As a storage fanatic that always struck me
> as something I'd have loved to see.
> 
>     Best,
> 
>     ellis
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