Sure-Fire Way To Destroy Your Hard Drive

HardDrivePeople who have tried to erase information from their hard drives have found that data holds on to life quite tenaciously.  Even after burning, soaking, crushing, chemical damage – some small trace of data stubbornly remains, allowing information to be retrieved.

Engineers at the University of Georgia recently completed a three-year study in which the goal was to ensure that data could be destroyed in order to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. The study concluded that the best way to destroy data is to use an extremely strong iron-born magnet.  Such a magnet will probably become standard equipment for the military, so drives carrying sensitive information could be tossed into the magnet’s field at a moment’s notice.

As for the scientists who conducted the study, they had the time of their lives. “ItÂ’s not often that we get paid to crush equipment in presses, blow things up and set off fires in microwave ovens,” says one.

Via New Scientist

HardDrivePeople who have tried to erase information from their hard drives have found that data holds on to life quite tenaciously.  Even after burning, soaking, crushing, chemical damage – some small trace of data stubbornly remains, allowing information to be retrieved.

Engineers at the University of Georgia recently completed a three-year study in which the goal was to ensure that data could be destroyed in order to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. The study concluded that the best way to destroy data is to use an extremely strong iron-born magnet.  Such a magnet will probably become standard equipment for the military, so drives carrying sensitive information could be tossed into the magnet’s field at a moment’s notice.

As for the scientists who conducted the study, they had the time of their lives. “ItÂ’s not often that we get paid to crush equipment in presses, blow things up and set off fires in microwave ovens,” says one.

Via New Scientist

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