The 'Hard Disk Crusher' doesn't mess around

(Credit: OhGizmo)

Oliver North found out the hard way that erasing e-mail doesn't mean it's gone forever. And in more than two decades since, countless others have shown that they still hadn't learned that lesson.

But there is one foolproof way of confounding even the best IT sleuths: the "Hard Disk Crusher."

This no-nonsense machine from EDR Solutions does exactly what its name says, destroying a hard disk in as little as 10 seconds. "It basically 'drills' through the hard drive's spindles which physically creates ripples in the platters making it impossible to recover any data," OhGizmo says.

The Crusher can even work with an emergency hand pump in case your building is surrounded by enemy forces who have cut off the power. The only problem--and it's a big one--is its $11,500 price tag. For that kind of money, a few medium-range explosives would seem more cost-effective.

[Wes#1]

Or try a Black & Decker electric power drill: $20.

Eleven grand... what a joke.

[torrance25]

Um, Ollie North testified before congress in 1987 about the Iran Contran Affair. Email did exist back then but, it was laughably limited, and North certainly didn't use it back then.

Yamamoto's opening line about Oliver North sounds cute, but is wrong. C'mon, let's have a little more journalistic research.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

...or perhaps you should try using Google before shooting your mouth off online. A quick search of "Ollie North e-mail" turns up a number of examples from the time.

[ericaatnews]

Also, Mr. Yamamoto was one of the reporters that actually covered North's testimony at the time. (Yeah, he's old.) So let's give him the benefit of the doubt when he makes references like that. :)

[Remo_Williams]

or a brick. or a prybar. or a good swing in a bag against the floor. seriously, this is like a fur-lined sink.

[No Man]

Do your own research. E-mail has been used extensively by government and military officials since 1977, and was a primary means of communication between White House officials in 1986. Oliver North attempted to delete over 5,000 of them regarding activity in Iran. However, he neglected to destroy the tape backups, resulting in the subsequent scandal.

[club50]

Just a note.. torrance25 suggested that email didnt exist back in 1987.. Well as the administrator at SAC headquarters durinig that period I can assure you that email did exist.. The classified government in those days used a communications system called CSP.. Email packets is how almost everything travels inside the CSP structure.. From missile commands to simple supplies.. Those CSP processors are stashed around several sites around the country and handled 90% of all classified traffic.. This custom system never touched any kind of public Intra-Net or the now internet.. The government does not allow classified computers to have access to the public internet.. Email has been around since Darpa-net did the first Public connections of the Air Force academy and the space telescopes in Hawaii.. This was in the 1970's.. I personally worked on Agile-net, which became Darpa-net, which bacame the now internet. Plus Xerox had emaill running on thier Global View system in the mid 80's as well.. Of course Global View was the original Windows/Mac User interface that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both copied and made into their Windows/Mac offerings.. Xerox sued Either Microsoft or Apple (*cant remember which) for stealing thier design and won the suit.. Had Xerox not sat on their butt we would all probably be running Xerox Global View insted of what we have now.. I still have a copy of Global View that runs on Intel machies and in some respects still beats Windows or Mac... Email in the government has been around a long time before the public got a hold of it.. In fact it was Robert Metcalf at Xerox that helped developed the pop3 and smtp standards before he left Xerox and started a little company called 3Com...

[StickyC]

I'm not sure how this makes the data unreadable. The platters are still more or less intact and the data is still in order. A precise enough mechanism could still pass a reading element over the deformed surface and pull enough data to reconstruct things...
Then again, if your data's worth that much, you're going to pay a lot more than $12k for the machine that purges it.

[rjona1]

a hard disk is rated to survive a 10g drop. . Unless you also have a nail , a hammer might not be effective
Is is possible to lose the data by pouring water on it ?

[CraigCalef]

This might be enough for your easily deterred adversaries but the data could still be read with techniques such as Electromagnetic Force Microscopy. The only way to be absolutely sure is complete molecular rearrangement. That is to say, melt the sucker. The adverterous and those short on time could use thermite. The more safety conscious could construct a simple furnace from a clay flower pot. The added benefit of this technique is you get a nice aluminum paper-weight out of the deal.

[niskimangu]

Well... You can use Electromagnetic Force Microscopy but then you will need Enterprise's on board computer to crunch data gathered from Microscopy. :D

[rjona1]

a hard disk is pretty durable. It is rated to survive 300G shock. A Hammer alone might not be effective. If you have a nail, maybe ....
Would pouring water be effective ?

[deadteck]

When all else fails just grab a 12 ga. and load in a few rounds of 3 in. .50 cal hollow point slugs. Makes a nice mess whatever your shooting at.

[wilson7867]

Need to destroy all data on a harddisk fast? Easy, kneel, put the disk on its side between your knees and *careful!* use a chisel and hammer to force it open. Especially laptop harddisk you can just hammer through the locking screws within 30 seconds. Then put a tip of the chisel on a platter and give it a big whollop! Splinters into a million fragments :-) After a few practice sessions, you can destroy any modern harddisk within 1 minute.

[kevnology]

The ONLY way to ensure that a hard drive disk is completely destroyed and unreadable is to burn it. Instead of spending 11 grand on a crusher, just put the HDD on your grill in the back yard.

[ookamiwarrior]

I know on any Mac computer (or available for Windows PC's from third parties), in Disk Utility you can choose to Zero Out Data, with a seven or 35 pass option is this not just as effective?
No it doesn't add the fun of spending $12G's on a glorified can crusher, or beating your HDD senseless with a hammer, but it is a little less effort at the end of the day.

[boopiejones]

last time i replaced my computer, a rusty old sledgehammer worked wonders to defrag my old harddrive. why anyone would spend $11,500 to do the same thing is beyond me.

[Mikeybabes]

rjona1, water would not do it. But for a lot less than $11,000 I can sell you a system where a jar of acid is located above your platters. Come communist invaders, IRS man, MPIAAA, whoever, push a button and the acid is released from the glass container directly onto the metal platters. I haven't patented the idea, but that would be all you really need. Just don't hit the button by accident.

[Leria]

Or, better yet, don't buy into the ******** and don't worry about this. Just do an overwriting with a program like Eraser 1 time a month or so, using only Pseudorandom, and they CANNOT retrieve your data. That is coming straight from a Professor I had in college who worked for the military doing JUST THAT.

Overwrite..... they cannot retrieve CRAP.

[d_a_keldsen]

And if you don't *have* a month? Think about the design constraints, guys.

All of this manly-man posturing about how you 'just' use things (that the users don't have when this thing is needed) is pretty juvenile.

[hkseo100]

Guys... just get aluminium filings and rust powder, ignite it with magnesium... If you're not satisfied after that, invest yourself $600 on a Romanian AK-47 and just pulverize it with FMJs.

[zzz1]

It is a simple thing to take the hard drive apart with a few tools. I have taken apart a couple of hundred of old compters and smashed the disks into small pices. (use eye portection) then mix it with some trash. It will not be noticed as the pices will be too small to find. Just do not put in only one bag, mix in several.