Power Tools at Work!
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Now this could be fun. Just imagine your boss comes to your cube with an electric drill, a sledgehammer, and a circular saw. Oh, and don't forget the safety glasses. You've got work to do.
That's what is happening in some IT shops as old data drives need to be destroyed with no hope of the data being recovered. I saw this article on data demolition and thought that might actually be a fun afternoon at work. Destroy some old data drives, ending their usefulness like the fax machine in "Office Space" 🙂
Data security is becoming a bigger issue all the time in the corporate world. And as more companies store more and more data on disk, the issues with disposal must be dealt with by more and more IT groups.
I guess you could hire a firm and get this before and after picture:
but I'd think that defeats the purpose somehow. It's the physical access outside your company that can be the problem. Going to a vendor specializing in destruction could be a problem since it gives criminals a single source (or a smaller source) or vendors they can bribe to get critical data. Better off letting different people in your company destroy the data at random intervals. That way no one can predict where and when the data will be destroyed.
Plus it would be fun 🙂
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Yeah, but the drive magnets in it are probably neodymium magnets (i.e., curiously strong). probably a good idea to trash the platters, though. Why not just a hot oven to melt them down into slag?
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Surely more fun to microwave the platters...
Anyone ever tried this? I've done a few CDs, they're quite interesting. I can imagine a platter might cause the Microwave to explode, which would certainly qualify in the interesting category.
I get mine granulated and recycled, admittedly I hadn't thought about the bribery aspect, but at least I have an ISO 14001/WEEE audit trail. Talking of regulations I'm guessing health and safety might catch onto it and spoil all our fun anyway.
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forget the business and security sense of keeping wholescale destruction as an in-house task - that kind of fun is just too good to outsource...
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C8H10N4O2
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LOL! This is a great idea. And, because of the comparison to Office Space, I have "Die ___ ___ die" stuck in my head...
:{> Andy
Andy Leonard, Chief Data Engineer, Enterprise Data & Analytics
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I think I'd vote for the 8lb sledge hammer, good exercise and showy results. Or I could picture something like one of those hydraulic presses they use on junk cars, squish it down to a 1.5" cube (not an OLAP on either).
Steve, how about we get everyone to send you their junk drives, you try out a few techniques and tell us which works best? I should get lunch for that suggestion!
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Though part of me aches seeing perfectlly good hardware (which could be used by deserving organizations) physically destroyed when data destruction can be correctly accomplished
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-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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I remember back in the day when I worked as a Field Service Engineer we had to take apart some removable disk packs that had sensitive data and "bend" and "scratch up" each individual platter!!
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The photo reminds me of "Will it Blend" on YouTube... search for it - seriously funny. The guy blends hard drives, phones, etc...
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Send in your drives. That could be fun!!!
Sledgehammer, huh? Like Mystery Men - "Junk It!!!"
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I have spent days with scissors scratching up old CD-ROM disks in order to send them to the dumpster. It was fun at first.
Personally, I've always wanted to drop a computer out of a fifth story window.
Michelle -
SET ODD_BUT_TRUE_MODE ON
About 9 months ago the CEO of our healthcare system had a new hard disk (larger capacity) installed in his desktop computer. Due to the sensitive nature of the data there the Help Desk was told to 'destroy' the disk (beat it or drill holes in it so even a data recovery service could not try) and bring it back to him. They gave it to me. I then took the disk down to the facilities engineering group and borrowed a cordless drill, just like the picture shown in the post, and commenced to drill about 20 holes through the entire hard drive. We then had to plug the disk into a computer power supply to see if it would power up after drilling through the case and all of the platters numerous times. It did not, we returned it to the CEO and were greeted with a warm smile. We System Engineers also had a great deal of laughs as well.
SET ODD_BUT_TRUE_MODE OFF
Now we are presently in another dilemma, we have about 7 Tb of DLT backup tapes that we need to dispose of. At present we are looking at somewhere between 10-25K to purchase the appropriate degaussing equipment, not to mention the manpower, somewhere in the 30+ man day area, based on the degaussing equipments duty cycle time.
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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One word: flamethrower.
Have a monthly drawing in IT for who gets to strap on that bad boy and light up a pile of disks and tapes in the parking lot. (And equipment training consists of targeting the cars that take up two spaces in our already crowded parking lot.)
Don't forget your safety glasses.
There is no "i" in team, but idiot has two. -
Or build one of these from the old tapes:
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Not knowing the exact SOX requirements, wouldn't a powerful magnet work on the DLT tapes?
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=36904
Michelle
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