The Most EFFECTIVE Ways To Destroy A Harddrive

[@jebstalp]

What really would have been interesting is to see if the data is still present on the platter when you replace the Main PCB of the HDD. They are often interchangeable

[@a.belladonna8316]

​@@ZoneStudios. or just Unscrew the drive and use sandpaper 😂

[@Napert]

burn it so hot that it loses all magnetic properties

[@a.belladonna8316]

@@Napert good idea but smell is problam

[@NootNooot]

they are not really interchangeable. BUT, recovery companies can configure them to be compatible. it's all about the platters for the data. the data does not go away with microwaving the outside.

[@MentorKenner]

@@ZoneStudios.Thermite would fully destroy it. Data would still be on those pieces

[@nickbonthetrack3357]

I love the fact that you push tech so far just to see if it can hold up. Love the content!

[@raven4k998]

microwave the hard disk only if you want a flame thrower🤣🤣🤣

[@justbubba4373]

Drilling through hard drives is how we destroyed drives to federal standards at the recycle/refurb warehouse. It was a shame to see so many rare working MFM drives just destroyed.

[@kevinwheeler4061]

Nooooooooooo!

[@cdos9186]

WTF MFM drives......PAIN. No wonder the eBay sellers are asking ridiculous amounts, the market sucks for stuff like that due to that reason, most of them are just permanently destroyed once out of service....

[@hiddenguy67]

what the

[@HarmonRAB-hp4nk]

really? better cover 100% of disk with holes.. :-) aka melt them, its got platinum in it lol........ kidding,federal standards seem quite low to anonymous.... they cracked the fbi database in aprox, 33 seconds :o who the heck knows what there capable of,,,, good thing there on our side lol

[@sidbrun_]

What's an MFM drive?

[@FLOWRIDER0_]

One of the better ways to truely delete the data (apart from shattering the internal platters) is to heat them past their curie temperature, which permanently demagnetizes them.

[@Gamer-nc8qp]

So im getting put it in thermite.

[@Gamer-nc8qp]

@@shadewood3083 yeah but the data is written magnetically. So even if the drive survives datas fucked. (The drive wont survive.) What i was suggesting will turn the whole thing into slag.

[@johanfrags7707]

​@@shadewood3083 When it's in thin-film applications (like the HDD) the curie point decreases dramatically, with some research online I found it is probably less than 200c (473K)

[@HarmonRAB-hp4nk]

haha another brilliant :-) knowledge is power :-) heat or.... electro magnet? tried ith a 5 pound pulll neodymium magnet, did nothing

[@vilisterle8035]

That was fantastic content. Make part 2 and get it to recovery company.

[@norooerg9087]

All of the hard drives will still have the data on it, like he explained at the end. People have recovered data from hard drives in plane crashes and mostly burned up.

[@user-om5es2zp7k]

No, part 2 should be hard drive waiting for 1 year

[@TheOneWhoAsked37]

My mans really microwaved and toasted a Hard drive 💀

[@Justiisna]

Bro commented before The video came out💀💀

[@TheOneWhoAsked37]

​@@JustiisnaWhat r u on about?

[@ImCooler10]

Yum

[@idkctk]

Let's fire up the computer 5 seconds later: NOT LITERALLY

[@keanupro7578]

frrrr

[@PeritusGamingTV]

Harddrive are actually really resistent to shocks when powered off. However when powered on, theyre super sensitive. Hence why laptop drives often die when people bump the machine

[@HarmonRAB-hp4nk]

drives were imune to that long ago, there's a bar across the head so it cant hit the platter... funny my father helpedd promote it. droppin a pc on the floor while running,,, the reaction he said was.... gasps.... lol its dead Jim..... but note on it went.... then I recall laptops coming ouut a coulple years later and we got a free IBM thinkpad... weird musta been show of appreciation back then cuz they dont give a crap about ppl now.... why there's programs you cant delete..... before it was total control with DOS the winshit came out.

[@pankoza]

that's why SSD became common

[@Nothanksithinkimfine]

​@@HarmonRAB-hp4nk So uh 1. Hard drives are more immune now 2. Your father promotes it 3. Then you guys get a free Thinkpad (which is rare nowadays that corporations give away free stuff(?)) 4. DOS gave more control (of the hardware(?)) than windows (NT(?))

[@skuzzbunny]

yeah, and you especially want to be doing lots of reading or better yet writing while banging it too, maybe while booting, or defragging, that'll ruin your day.....D

[@moonslink]

I'd love to see part 2! I have a couple of dead HDDs that I've kept, hoping I can afford to recover the data someday. Your video will either give me confidence or make me doubt sending them to a professional data recovery service.

[@QualityDoggo]

Definitely worth a shot; a lot of small reputable businesses do good work for affordable prices versus the thousands than many big name companies will quote. Most common failure is the heads; headswap may be all it needs.

[@JessicaFEREM]

what about a bulk tape eraser? it's a powerful electromagnet meant to erase magnetic media (casettes, VHS, etc) in a matter of seconds. I believe it's what the pros use.

[@valliantsteed]

No, businesses usualy just let them be shred. Bulk erazers are from a time where you often would reuse tapes or floppies, they would destroy the mechnicle parts of a HDD anyway, so they just get shredded. If you wanna keep em working, you'd use a save eraze proccess of overwriting the data - at least with mechanical HDDs. Doesn't work well enough with SSDs and if it's soldere to the mainboard, the entire computer gets scrapped.

[@defuntogamer377]

Rem♥♥♥♥

[@LandonEmma]

A what?

[@JessicaFEREM]

@@valliantsteed I meant pros as I'm pros back in the day who wanted to blank out their reels.

[@MrPir84free]

They do make degaussers for hard drives.. But these degaussers are on an entire another level compared to a bulk tape eraser .. Think the cost is somewhere around $20K and above. Most businesses take the drives to another business to shred the drives; like a big paper shredder. We did this at work; the shredder came with their truck, they videotape the entire process, and provide a certification that the drives are shredded. Did like 650+ drives that day. Still expensive. To be honest, the best approach is software & time; there's software that you can boot and shred the drives by overwriting the drives a number of times using certain patterns. The lazy man's approach would be to configure bitlocker or some other full disk encryption program into action, and encrypt the ENTIRE drive, and be sure to lose the key.

[@leonhardscholtyssek]

The magnets would work, but only if you used them on the magnetic discs themselves. Because like you did it, they are protected from the metal shell like in a Faraday cage.

[@raven4k998]

are any harddisks made of aluminum or is that just a myth?🤔

[@leonhardscholtyssek]

@@raven4k998 I don't think that there are any hard drives made from aluminum, because it isn't magnetic.

[@hemant3332]

@@raven4k998 yes many of them are made up of aluminum, they will put some magnetic material on top of that, opened one 80 Gb hard disk from 2006 today to see the aluminum platter.

[@JuniorsChannel11]

The reason the HDD survived at 1:54 is because it has a seal between the actual mechanics and the outside which makes it waterproof. Maybe the board too? and also the hard drive still worked because they're sealed to prevent dust from corrupting data.

[@uss_liberty_incident]

Looking forward to seeing the data recovery results!

[@hoteny]

Did it happen?

[@uss_liberty_incident]

@@hoteny No clue

[@hoteny]

@@uss_liberty_incident thanks for the reply

[@Little_Bird123]

me too

[@wolfbrave4866]

Well if you let it sit on a thousand pounds of C4 and set it off I don't think there is anything left to sent it to the date recovery center.

[@phantomcrafter146]

Mythbusters be like:

[@gamingballsgaming]

@@phantomcrafter146 "yeah we couldnt get any c4 so we put a few match boxes underneath and the drive survived, so we can say Myth Busted!"

[@Darkblu242]

No hard drives were harmed in the making of this video

[@random_stuff_channel]

*Many hard drives were harmed in the making of this video

[@Pinguinesindgeil]

They were fucking violated.

[@HShadz]

Real

[@EstarH100]

No, hard drives were destroyed in the making of this video

[@krazownik3139]

I have a better idea: don't do it unless absolutely necessary. If the hard drive it's not damaged, it's still a free storage to use. Just buy an external enclosure for it and your good to go. If you really need to wipe all the data running a few times something like: dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/$DISC should do the job. But if you really need to physically destroy it, use a furnace and melt the platters.

[@EtherialEdits]

No, most companies destroy drives when it contained sensitive data, it's not enough to run commands to erase data.

[@itsmoi5673]

What is the /dev/random device file? Can't we use /dev/zero?

[@itsmoi5673]

@@AlexBarbu that's actually smart, didn't think of it

[@jhgvvetyjj6589]

The point is that its durability test

[@someidiot4311]

@@EtherialEdits yes it is. a single zero pass should be good, recovering that is only theoretical iirc. a single /dev/random pass is almost guaranteed to get your drive unrecoverable. do several passes of /dev/random if you want to be really safe. even though company policy usually requires the drives to be destoryed, its unnecessary. although when decommisioning a server, its usually quicker to just shred rather than erase

[@csabirares411]

For those wondering, the hard drives buried in dirt did survive.

[@Lampe2020]

That proposal to the HDD was just fantastic, I couldn't stop laughing until it devolved into a wild coughing XD

[@TheTrueOSSS]

2 methods that will render all data unreadable. 1) sharp blow(s) to the spindle with a hammer. This will shatter the discs inside without making much of a mess. 2) take it to the shooting range. Lead traveling at roughly 1000fps should be enough to compromise the data.

[@Koopai386]

Bro is able to go to really long lengths to entertain us. And I respect that

[@alexbenavidez4500]

The microwave test was done in the most dangerous way possible lmao Just all safety precautions absent like not doing the test outdoors, not having heat resisting gloves, and having nothing to put out a fire nearby on hand too The fire after the sparks might have been a shock and unexpected, but surely if you know that metal sparks in microwave, that fire is a risk in this experiment, but it was was still done indoors with no safety precautions at all Says not to try this at home; proceeds to try it at home

[@unamelable256]

I feel bad for his victims. Because cmon. Even if its HDD its still have 1TB. Why you didn't pickup like 120 or 300GB drives :(

[@Varkie0]

💀

[@Horadian]

James Bond: Dang it it’s encrypted Criminal: nah I just toasted it

[@Thomario20]

Bro really dated a hard drive to destroy it💀

[@alexmuse3565]

One of the ways we destroyed the hard drives at my old workplace because we dealt with sensitive data was my boss would disassemble them and then he'd give the parts to me. And my favorite way to spend the afternoon was drilled pressing the disk platters. And setting the inclosures on fire. I can guarantee you after being drilled, put in saltwater, and set on fire. That data was gone.

[@MHNDMF545]

Poor hard drives😢 1 like to mryeester = 1 prayer

[@MrReddFlames]

yes

[@m3snusteve]

Try putting the hard drive into a Mri scanner, and see if it survives the extreme magnetic 🧲 fields. Thanks for sharing 😊

[@BWB_Cubing]

9:23 did i actually just get rickrolled by an hdd😂🤣🙄

[@djminibikez]

2:20 man said frozen water 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@youtubehead_]

Man as a PC lover, you destroying those hdds really hit me.

[@Kteelou]

I got a real kick out of the many ways you try to destroy the hard drive. Thank for the laughs

[@FrontWaffle]

Me: smashes it onto the floor

[@theNikNikovsky]

Just use a paper clip

[@shebadoge]

It’s still recoverable

[@Gojde]

1:06 Bro made HDD Popcorn 💀

[@doz3r943]

they only way to make 100% sure on one can ever get data from these is to over wright the data 32 plus times then grind the platters into dust

[@Kevin-k8l2z]

3:30 we pop tart this toaster strudel had me dying

[@denizkutuk2912]

I would love to see if a recovery company can save the data on the harddrives.

[@raven4k998]

well you know patients can destroy the data but that takes decades to do believe it or not cause that magnetic coating degrades slowly over time getting weaker this is why old hard dives for old computers like 486's do not work as well as brand new magnetic hard drives cause that coating has degraded to the point that data reading in no longer reliable at all on them

[@TheRedYTPer]

5:35 “Try to love it” *GET GIFTS THAT LOVE*

[@Bron-le5ww]

Day 2# of asking to cool a cpu with a penny made before 1982

[@slothvole]

why would u want to see this???

[@Bron-le5ww]

@@slothvole bc pennies manufactured before 1982 were 95% copper unlike todays pennies which are only 5%, so in theory it’d be more thermally conductive and do a better job cooling the cpu.

[@legendmaster1989]

@@Bron-le5wwso what material are used now?

[@Bron-le5ww]

@@legendmaster1989 they’re mainly zinc with a copper coating(5% copper and 95% zinc). The older pennies used an alloy of 95 % copper and 5% zinc.

[@legendmaster1989]

@@Bron-le5ww why they switch is it cheaper or something?

[@natew4724]

Genius way to get subscribers, we're already 7:40 in, so we probably subscribe (even tho i might forget)

[@filenotfound__3871]

Microvawe was actually not effective, because while it did kill the circuitboard, all the data is still on the platter and can be recovered. Same goes for the water and the toaster, the internals might not be damaged. Galium method also wouldn't work for direct platter contact an any drive because every harddrive has a protective and magnetic layer over the platter witch would stop the reaction, alltho oppening the drive by itself will kill it. Dropping it will kill the R/W heads, but the platter is good and data is recoverable. The vinyil one was funny, put it in a CD/DVD for some funny noises (i tested it) Might be fun if you sealed the "breathing" hole and just continiued using it to see how long it lasts.

[@leonpano]

Answer is For some drive yes For some drive no If controllers have self encrypted Then is controller died then data on disk make no sense anymore Data just garbage

[@filenotfound__3871]

@@leonpano Yes, but that encryption key is located on the rom chip on the drive, it is highly unlikely that it will die from any of theese

[@leonpano]

@@filenotfound__3871 more depends And maybe rom and controller is bind together Means you can’t replace other controller And most likely rom is in controller

[@filenotfound__3871]

@@leonpano Very rare on consumer harddrives

[@NathanYellowStarProductions]

5:36 Bro's romancing on a hard drive 💀💀💀

[@oscargrant4468]

For the freezing one, thats actually a way to make tempremental hard drives OK for a period of time.

[@hotsauce2446]

I've been considering doing this on an old 2gb HDD that still spins but won't initialize. I was thinking I would seal it in plastic bags with a usb reader attached and the wires sticking out. I just need to clone it so it should work long enough. I came to this idea from using an upside down canned air for diagnosing bad transistors in old radios.

[@georg841984]

i used to work in a data repair company and we had these contracts with the government to destroy hardrives we shreded the platers in to dust and then ran the dust in a magnetizer demagnetizer.

[@VM-_-]

He finally did it

[@MikaAndroid]

"a Linus special" I'm dying 😂

[@ReDark094]

Tbh the toaster was probably the most dangerous one, I was surprised he didn’t pop a breaker the moment he pushed it down

[@Everything_and_Nothing_Tech]

I use hard drive platters as drink coasters

[@kaangg12]

6:00 HDD rejected you lol

[@ShinyTechThings]

Use ill tempered sea bass if you don't have access to sharks with laser beams 🤦‍♂️🤣

[@MikeyMandFluffyMainProductions]

Man don't you hate it when you accidentally microwave your hard drive 😔

[@sparda2.061]

Thermal paste essence, that made my day🤣I love it

[@KiaFaker]

Hey man, I've seen you clean components with alc. But how about testing if they function in alc? (My dumb idea at 3 am)

[@TylerM4936]

My go to has always been opening the drives, scratching the crap out of them and then bending the platters befote cutting them with an angle grinder. You may say overkill, but i say effective. (Also fun fact laptop hard drives sometimes use a brittle material for the platter, I've had one shatter in my hand while just trying to bend it slightly by hand)

[@L.H657]

i mean you could just sand the disks with sandpaper

[@jet_mouse9507]

You should take it apart, spin it up by plugging it in, and then apply the sandpaper! It would be like a reverse spinning sander thingy!

[@Foxywind8410]

9:21 he went there 💀

[@JT0_0]

hey its been a year!!

[@Therlgermanchicken]

He made a short

[@JosephM101]

7:08 "a Linus special..." Should've included that one clip where he dropped a server hard drive on the floor

[@jackykoning]

The only true way is to first overwrite the data. However many times you want. Then fully disassemble the hdd, using a torch on the platters and then grinding them up into a powder. You also have to burn the PCB. The rest doesn't matter but I am sure big tech will also destroy the read headers just in case there is some secret hidden memory in there.

[@Jesus_Christ_is_Lord_]

Or you can just melt down your hardeive in a small forge

[@AlsoKnownAsWinter]

Cover it in gasoline and melt it into slag

[@Gamer-nc8qp]

​@@AlsoKnownAsWintergasoline wont do it but thermite will XD

[@johncaze757]

​@@Gamer-nc8qpwhat about blend it?

[@Gamer-nc8qp]

@@johncaze757 it would work. The standard for NATO secret information is to degauss the drive. For top secret degauss and destroy.

[@helifynoe9930]

Yes, microwave it. I had an old pair of leather gloves that were too big. So I sprayed them with water, put them in the microwave oven for a few seconds. This shrunk the gloves down to the perfect size. LOL

[@venb]

Now I wonder what would happen if you only microwave the disk platter

[@Theskyhadaweege]

I dont think you could since just touching the platter can brick the entire drive

[@DGTelevsionNetwork]

Would spark on the outer rim as the microwave wavelengths bounce off of edges, the rest would just be reflected off.

[@janodefenua4603]

Just smash it to bits with Sledgehammer, Aint no way in hell data can be recovered after that. Back in the days this is how we used to "hide" accounting in our company at the orders from our boss.

[@Vaultyboi]

Please dig up the hdd from your yard. A year has passed. :)

[@cppctek]

10000% wanna see what data recovery can do with those lololol 😂

[@doz3r943]

they can get back the data on most of these very easy its all in the platters

[@thisislocombia]

​@@doz3r943what if they get shattered?

[@LearningOnCrackStudios]

Bro done preparing us for the worst consequences FBI got nothing on this guy online

[@zomgjim]

Next time… Cover it in thermite and light it up. 🔥

[@GMDSulky]

What I learned from this video is that microwaving your hard drive is a good way to prank your friends.

[@yshaalan2011]

Yes send it to a company. I recommend drivesavers, plz do it,love your content

[@zBijs]

To avoid any chance of data recovery, one would need to make the platters dissapear. So, after drilling, leave them in acid for months. If no acid, then get on a boat and throw them one by one, across large distances, to the sea. Deepness to hide them, and salt water may help the corrosion.

[@LoLmomentFunny]

I don't think that's what he meant by loving it 💀 5:36

[@_decky4ever_]

These all awesome, but most of it not wreck the data on the platter. The sure way: sand the platter, spin up and give it a good tap, and the platter shatters

[@Blixt1000]

TIP: The only way to truly destroy a Hard Drive is to physically break, or malform the platter. It is still possible for recovery companies to get things like the motor and the head to work.

[@DanielFrias6388]

And if you drop it, you would have double trouble, a broken disc and floor.

[@someidiot4311]

the cia or nsa will probably put it together like puzzle pieces if you tell them theres russian secrets on it

[@NLJS_NorskGaming]

Make a part 2 to try a recovery Company

[@cesarjom]

1:50 Just because your HDD is no longer accessing data does not mean you cannot get the data off the physical disk platters. EDIT: Ah, you mentioned that at the end of your video 👏👏👏

[@RICK_MCN]

I found your channel on a reels and I'd be curious to see if any of them at 8/10 made it if you didn't already do that video? That was a good video brother.

[@MarginallyAddicted]

Pov you had to much in your "homework" folder

[@sage5296]

The reason a car doesn't work is bc the rubber tires distribute the pressure. If a car had metal wheels like a train, you'd see a fair bit more damage probably, but even so the pressure isn't that insane. Speaking of trains tho... (probably shouldn't try it tho, wouldn't wanna be liable for causing a derailment) it'd be interesting to see like how much it takes to crush it with a hydraulic press tho, I'm sure there's some channels who wouldn't mind helping out in finding out the answer to that lol As far as the microwave and water goes, you've definitely fried the supporting hardware, but I wonder if the disk itself is still ok? A professional could probably transplant the disk with new supporting hardware to recover the data if needed I'd imagine, so it'd be interesting to see just how much the disk itself was messed up by the fields in the microwave. Definitely interested in that followup! I'd bet the toaster warped the disk, I think that would be probably one of the most effective ways. The platter going above a certain temp should make it lose the ability to store magnetic charges, and warping it would make it further just unable to be spun, so I think heat is really the way to go. Jabbing some holes in it with a soldering iron would probably be super effective lol The reason regular magnets don't work, is because the harddrive uses magnets a fraction of a millimeter away from the disk, so you either need something really strong or really close. That's why dropping a (older) harddrive can kill it, the disk can bump into that magnetic head while spinning and take out a huge gouge. Modern drives can detect the freefall and will park the head away from the disk and stop the spinning to help avoid damage tho

[@cocolatte3076]

I can't stand to watch it.....but this experiment, someone has to do it.......for science....

[@Cornyone]

"Have I mentioned you shouldn't do this at home?" Me who has already done all of these things: "Wait. I wasn't?"

[@RaIn-sh]

Ask a construction worker to drive a bulldozer over your HDD

[@Rotund_Sheep]

Idea for part 2: use dynamite

[@ziefty]

Most creative KZbinr I know

[@random_person618]

Excellent video. I loved it. Keep it up just like this!

[@mahadevvinay6882]

“The data on the hdd is stored magnetically, so it doesn’t go away.” *sets his drive on fire and doesnt give 10/10* Heat: am i a joke to you?

[@Spoolingturbo6]

+1 for data recovery expert video

[@Koopai386]

5:48 bro has some advanced lvl 100 pc rizz

[@gelo1238]

HDD platters are coated in ferrous material and even if they are from aluminum you would need to scratch off the ferrous material. But what about the HDD case? You should try it! Also sugestion - put it into vacuum!

[@christopherleubner6633]

The shiny stuff is either cobalt samerium or platinum cobalt alloy. The bright silver ones are the PtCo and the more golden ones are the SmCo type.

[@Nameisnotimportant]

3:30 My man toasted PC with toasted HDD

[@EverythingAwesomeTech]

I want a part 2 please. I want to be featured lol

[@8_Twelve]

When he microwaved it and toasted it, it was like the “dinner is ready!”

[@TheShadow89090]

You could have just opened the hard drive to make it literally nearly impossible to read again :P

[@ruasi]

in case anyone is curious, AWS datacenters use machines called degaussers which are machines with very powerful magnets that scramble the data, then they get smashed by a mangleR (yes its called a mangleR) which essentially bends and smashes the disks to pieces :)

[@DaffyDaffyDaffy33322]

I would love to see what recovery companies think of them. I was actually wondering that while watching the video. I liked and subbed just for that

[@rafaeljoaquincalzada]

1:27 Yeah my PC runs cyberpunk 2077. 💀

[@KYSMO]

OMG CANT WAIT FOR THE FOLLOW UP VID

[@Stanislav_Lauko]

So, it´s 8 months later, as you said in the end, was there enough interest in this video to send the harddrives to a professional data recovery company ?

[@Kepler_2258]

TNT would be a 10/10 lol

[@themagic8ball]

5:37 oh my god I love it!

[@hi_its_me1337]

Mom what are we eating for dinner? Oh its a new recipe, its called toasted hard dr-

[@alext6933]

When I need to wipe a hard drive I write zeros to it take the platters out scratch them up break him into tiny tiny little shards. And then I scatter them across the entire country.

[@imnotbadokbro]

I love the thermal paste essence candle

[@wowzreal]

Dude you are so underrated