For physical disk destruction, no piece should be larger than a single 512 byte record block, about 1/125th of an inch. So forget the drill, use a grinder.

Between the desire, And the spasm
Between the potency, And the existence
Between the essence, And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is, Life is, For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Third world data mining, who’d a thunk it?

Don’t worry, we’ll hurry up and close the barn door after the horses are out. All that shredding and ruination is “Too little, Too late”.

Plus, if there was no verification that things were being wiped, who really thinks that the cut rate contractors will waste money on the energy to shred the stuff. Easier to palletize and sell, that way you get paid twice.

Gotta get paid, y’know!

“Get’er’done!”

-or-

“Lisa, if you don’t like your job, you don’t strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”

War on terror = war on braainz.

Witnessed destruction is indeed the only way, send the newest tech down with them, pay the money, feel the comfort.

Printers/scanners/copiers – many have a 5gb to 20gb hard drive – containing the details of the last several hundred print/scan/copy runs.

Cell phones, Blackberrys, PDAs all have a lot of personal data held on them. Even GPSs have your family and friends addresses.

Routers, Switches? No company data but static IP addresses and other network data – helps open up your network to attack.

Witnessed destruction – take your drives/equipment to an ewaste shredding company and watch them go into the shredder – sure it’ll cost you a few hundred bucks, but i bet Northrup wish they had done that rather than get back a few bucks by selling the equipment for “asset management” (read: Brand Destruction)

Every day, big containers with thousands and thousands of old computers are being shipped to low-cost nations to be dismantled and disposed of.

That’s because some private company said they could dispose of your old shit at a ridiculously low price, and now they’ve got the contract.

They do not Degauss, drill, or anything else but ship it.

Where else am I going to get refrigerator magnets?

I think it’s a terrible idea. Yes, it solves the data leaks, but it wastes an incredible resource and adds immensely to the waste stream and energy usage. Why shred perfectly usable parts when it’s a tiny fraction of them that causes problems? Simply set an internal standard for separating the drives and sell them (and only them) on a must-shred contract. The data loss issue is solved while still preserving untold amounts of energy and preventing toxin releases.

I guess the military has more reasons for the shredding, though; their problem was some unauthorized countries (i.e. Iran) were buying fighter parts through third parties that came from US military surplus. But it shouldn’t be too hard to restrict only those material classes that would represent a security problem.

The ‘standard’ for wiping data is to over write the disk multiple times using alternating data patterns. Until not so long ago, seven passes were thought sufficient, based on the way flight recorders can give up 7 separate ‘recordings’ from its loop of metal wire which serves as the internal recording media,.

Forensic software, designed to be used by police or governments, but freely available to whoever can afford it, has upped the acceptable limit to 20 or so passes. However the longer something is kept on magnetic media the harder it will be to remove completely, where there can be a ‘screen burn’ effect. Thus it’s possible to examine magnetic media with electron microscopes to determine patterning of the magnetising agent.

The question you have to ask yourself is how badly would someone want anything you might have stored on your hd.

If you’re a defence contractor, then the physical destruction of the media makes a lot of sense.