Vin
Julian OliverHitachi HDD: Z7K320-250 / 250GB / SATA 3.0Gb/s.
Data erasure method: 50lb Longbow, two arrows at 15 yards.
Data erasure method: 50lb Longbow, two arrows at 15 yards.
Posted this on the birdcage a while back. Just wanted to have it here. Oh, and for any that doubt the reliability of this method, I could pour out the glass substrate (platter completely bent), thousands of tiny shards. Gone baby gone
Der Augsburger@JulianOliver Much more elegant than my use of a heavy 🔨
masukomi@JulianOliver I wonder if you couldn't make some sort of "Artisinal data erasure service" out of this. Like folks send you a drive. You shoot it with arrows & photograph results (including serial numbers) and they can show off to boss / coworkers that they did it.
Might be an entertaining little side-stream of money with good word of mouth. :D
SpectrumTroglodyte@masukomi @JulianOliver You could add a slow-motion replay as the arrow hits the drive. Maybe even an animation showing the amount of data obliterated.
@spectrumtroglodyte @JulianOliver is the slo-mo something you pay extra for? I World assume so.
amount of data obliterated would be… potentially dangerous from a legal liability perspective.
Wildduck@masukomi @JulianOliver Imho, you either offer tools for the pleasure of doing this themselves, or you get one of these to offer warranty of destruction. 😁
Shingo Mouse 🌳@Wildduck @masukomi @JulianOliver Well, one way to test the warranty of destruction of that is to drop a computer's C:\ drive into that and then take the remains of it to your local FBI Field Office, and tell them that you managed to recover this and it has a lot of import intel on it from someone who is working with a far-right group to overthrow the U.S. Government to install a dictator, and it also contains plans for major terrorist attacks against the U.S., to see what they would do with it.
@ShingoMouse @Wildduck @JulianOliver I don’t see how that would help. They already know about Trump supporters.
@ShingoMouse @Wildduck @JulianOliver ...seeing this again, i realize it may not have been clear that my response was an attempt at humor. 🤔
@masukomi @ShingoMouse @JulianOliver Don't overthink this haha, it was implied in the mouse toot but we got it. 😁
Rick Rae@JulianOliver
My boss had a platter explosively shatter in his hand (no injury, thankfully) during a disassembly/destruction process. I forwarded this to him as a suggested safer method of drive erasure for next time. :BlobCatGoogly:
My boss had a platter explosively shatter in his hand (no injury, thankfully) during a disassembly/destruction process. I forwarded this to him as a suggested safer method of drive erasure for next time. :BlobCatGoogly:
@RickRae Cripes, a bit frightening!
Trojan Duck@JulianOliver Are those arrows OEM?
RevJeber@JulianOliver
You know the rules of hunting. Now that you've killed it you have to eat it.
You know the rules of hunting. Now that you've killed it you have to eat it.
0xC0DEC0DE07EA@JulianOliver oh, I *am* equipped to irrevocably destroy my own data!
Bynkii@JulianOliver @Wraithe yep. The impact shock from the arrow is not small.
Nico -telmich- Schottelius@JulianOliver Where low-tech-fine-art meets high tech, lovely.
Doug Webb@JulianOliver all the anprims join hands and dance a jig
Barry Rowlingson@JulianOliver But I was going to make a suit of armour out of all those old hard drives I have lying around...
Mech MouseIron-Ferrous Man killed by Hawkeye at point of concept... harsh
BT_Finn🌈@JulianOliver cheaper: 1 bucket of water
Fuzzysteve@BT_Finn @JulianOliver And not particularly effective. the data on the platters would be unaffected (unlike the shattering which happened due to arrow)
Benjamin Balder Bach@JulianOliver for anyone watching this, you don't need to use destructive methods such as hammers or arrows or drills.
You can also overwrite your disks and reuse them 💯
@benjaoming yes I like 'dd if=/dev/urandom of=/path/to/disk bs=10m` or similar, but this had a little pre-click of death anyway. Worked, but was on the way out.
@JulianOliver ack! photos are also cool 😎
As individuals, we shouldn't waste time on unreliable drives. But the myth of data security makes companies produce heaps of e-waste. Millions of drives are wasted every year in the name of data security.
Henrik Kramselund - kramse@benjaoming @JulianOliver
while I am for reusable, there is no way I as a consumer can trust the overwriting bit of bits
The game changed a lot when we started to use SSDs. Wear leveling and rewriting while writing means that blocks are moved around, quite a lot.
There is also parts that are "spare blocks" which can be used as the device gets older etc etc.
The best way to ensure you can reuse a storage device is to turn on encryption, and then do your best to delete the key part of this
@kramse @JulianOliver yes, encryption is great and that's the #1.
SSD come with firmware-level implementations that overwrite all sectors (also the hidden ones). You will of course have to trust the manufacturer to implement this properly.
This is a great resource: https://tinyapps.org/docs/wipe_drives_hdparm.html
RiskyThinking@benjaoming @JulianOliver But if you have a drawer full of low capacity hard disks you thought you might be able to reuse one day overwriting isn't practical or useful.
Have you considered how long it takes to overwrite ten 500GB slow disks? Or whether you can find someone who even wants them?
This looks so much more fun than using a power drill.
@riskythinking @JulianOliver Step 1) Overwrite
Step 2) Put in drawer :)
I usually put a label on a disk, like "overwritten".
Less risky if full-disk encryption was used.
Been using tools from StarTech to overwrite multiple disks at once, they have some pretty cool stuff.
But yeah, if you have zero intention of reusing a disk, you might as well do some quick irreversible damage to it :+1:
Chris Owens@benjaoming @JulianOliver I also doubt you’re securely erasing much of the disk like this. Bend the platters back into shape, and I reckon they’d be mostly readable. You’d (possibly) be surprised the lengths people go to when they really want to recover someone’s data.
Ian Douglas Scott@likesohushhush
@benjaoming @JulianOliver Yeah, it depends on your threat model. If someone isn't specifically after your data it isn't worth that much effort to get data from a random discarded drive, but then the intentional damage might indicate value...
I wonder what data recovery companies charge to recover data from drives damaged in, err, unfortunate longbow accidents.
Although boring, merely zeroing the drive is probably actually more reliable. Could do both though.
@ids1024 @likesohushhush @benjaoming Could've dd'd /dev/urandom to it, but after I shot it platter was bent, spindle popped, and the glass substrate poured out as dust. Run and reliable
ghostdancer@benjaoming I guess this system is more satisfying and fulfilling. 😉 @JulianOliver
Gareth Husk@benjaoming @JulianOliver
I would keep drives against possibly re using but most of the time these disks are either, too slow, too small or won't respond when you try to use / DBan them.
Fortunately my city council hires a disk shredder once a year and for a donation to the library I can shred all the disk I want. Working diskless devices go to a re-use charity
mhd@JulianOliver A bit anachronistic. It's a well known fact that layering is the key to defeating arrows, so the ancients actually used hard drives with three platters when being threatened by enemy forces wielding longbows.
Smári McCarthy@JulianOliver pretty sure some data on that is recoverable though. 😉
Shield Maiden@JulianOliver I can't tell you how immensely reassuring and impressive that is...hope you can safely retrieve the arrows.
Chtixof 🦊🚲🌻🐝@JulianOliver
B(l)ow tech!
B(l)ow tech!
Momo le Mamouth 🐝
Yusuf Toropov@Mgzallp @JulianOliver it's the user-friendliness of this method that has me sold
RadicalWoman111
Daniel has moved@JulianOliver "Insert drive with the arrows facing upwards."
Mumpaminkel@JulianOliver I would love to listen in on the call with the data recovery center.
Arden (she/her)@JulianOliver yup, that should do the trick
Newk@JulianOliver I want this IT Robin Hood to kill my browser history when I’m gone.
Aral Balkan@JulianOliver Wanna shoot a couple of those towards Twitter’s data centre for me? :P
@aral @JulianOliver nah, save the wood. I'm pretty sure they'll self implode in a dramatic fashion on their own. No-one left with the knowledge to keep them from doing it. ;)
Victor Wiebe@JulianOliver
That is so much more innovative than using a magnet!
That is so much more innovative than using a magnet!
Stefan Midjich ꙮ҄
Annica 🇸🇪
Echologiste@JulianOliver Seems efficient
Ross of Ottawa@JulianOliver nice - and historically accurate. That's how they disabled hard drives in the middle ages, as per the Bayeux Tapestry.
Edward Barrow@JulianOliver I bet a specialist data recovery organisation could get a decent amount of data off of that even now.
Terrie Schweitzer (Personal)@JulianOliver This belongs in a gallery.
Adam Krassowski@JulianOliver seems like a Chaos Communication Congress talk in the making
オチュー (stop colonialism 🇵🇸)@JulianOliver as the "IT guy" by default, someone did ask me what would be a paranoid way to erase their hard drive. I said jokingly "a sledgehammer and a lake".
It was taken seriously. Sorry, lake.
SteeleDynamics λ 
@JulianOliver I like to think that Iron Mountain has a group of archers and a range in a basement somewhere where hard drives get skewered.
(Loose!!)
The result has an artistic quality to it.
Santiago Ortiz