Erasing Data off Dead Phones and Hard Drives

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Archie_tect

De Skieven Architek... aka Penfold + Horace
Location
Northumberland
Smashing with a hammer usually does it too...
 

irw

Quadricyclist
Location
Liverpool, UK
Smashing with a hammer usually does it too...
Smash a screwdriver through the hard drive. That works.
Alternatively amuse yourself for 40 mins or so, and take it to pieces.

Point to note...neither of these options will actually erase the date...make it unobtainable for now, maybe, but what about when some future archeologist finds the fragments and pieces them together...? :s
 

irw

Quadricyclist
Location
Liverpool, UK
In answer to the question, no a magnet won't work on your phone (solid state drives don't store it magnetically). It might work on an 'old fashioned' hard drive, but I don't know to what degree!
 

mustang1

Guru
Location
London, UK
The last time I wanted to destroy a hard disk, the metal used in it is so tough that my drill couldn't even make a dent.
 

Brains

Legendary Member
Location
Greenwich
I visited a company in the City of London a few years back, who specialise in restoring data from damaged drives.

Drives with holes and drives reassembled like a puzzle are bread and butter business for them.
They could even get the data from a hard drive that had been at the bottom of a canal for months

In our case we had a drive that had been deliberately reformatted to wipe all the data.
They got the data back.
What the wiper should have done apparently is filled up the hard drive with music, formatted it, and then filled it up with music again and again.
 

Brains

Legendary Member
Location
Greenwich
Allegedly what today's IT savvy drug lord is doing is doing is to have a secret server physically hidden on or near the property, which is where you keep all your real records.
It means you can have numerous laptops and PC around the property, none of which have any incriminating information, but all can access the secret server.
The problem is for the authorities is to find the server, assuming it ever existed, as you can bet it will be well hidden, and may not be on the actual property.
To confuse the issue further they wire up the property and number the cables, say 5, 6, 7,& 8. Which then means the authorities spend days trying to find cable 1,2, 3 and 4, but all they find is cable 12, which means means more searching, all to no avail, as they never existed.

There is a recent drug bust Here that give you and idea of the level people will go to hide illegal activities.
Can you imagine the size of the hole that must have been made to bury 12 containers under 20 feet of soil !
And that is before you add air circulation, venting, drainage, plumbing etc.
 
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