[Tfug] Destroying a hard drive

[Rich]

On Sep 8, 2007, at 5:22 pm, keith smith wrote:

> This guys says if you remove the spindle and platters your drive  
> will never be recoverable.
For casual recovery, yes. But it's my understanding that forensics  
labs remove the platters to recover data in the most extreme cases.

It makes sense: If a drive is shocked hard enough, the bearings will  
be screwed up anyway, the spindle might get a flat on it. Either way,  
the platters are no longer centered properly. Platters are balanced  
discs, so finding the center of gravity is the key to finding the  
axis around which the tracks are written. Once you have that, you own  
the data.

R.