Howdy Folks,

A few months ago I got an email from Christian that went into great detail about how to dissolve hard drives in Hydrochloric Acid.

I for one think shredding hard drives and then recycling the materials is a much better way to go, but in any event, if you’re interested messing around with acid, here’s how you go about doing it.

Disclaimer: I don’t recommend doing this and I hope that by posting this, and by showing the potential dander, nobody will give it a try. As you’ll read, you need to Personal Protective Gear and you will be producing extremely hazardous Hydrogen gas. Not to mention dealing with a highly corrosive chemical.

Side Note: FYI… Shredding hard drives doesn’t required Personal Protective Gear, doesn’t great Hydrogen Gas, and doesn’t involve the handling of corrosive chemicals.

But on with the show…

Greetings.

I am writing with a few comments and observations on dissolving hard drives in HCL or hydrochloric acid.

First of all, the stuff is relatively easy to find.  Any Lowes, Home Depot, garden/pool/spa/home improvement store should carry it in quarts, half or whole gallons.  You might also want to ask for muriatic acid, which is the same thing.  The best thing to buy would naturally be the most concentrated, which they usually sell at between 30 and 32% or so.

Granted, you want to be damned careful with the stuff [my emphasis added], as I can say from experience that it burns like hell if the concentrated acid gets on your skin, especially if you have a cut…  Anyway, you don’t need a space suit to handle it.

Though I have never destroyed a hard drive with it, here is what I would do, based on my knowledge of and experience with this corrosive substance.

FYI, you can also find similar info on line, though perhaps not as detailed.  If you destroy a hard drive in acid, I’d recommend putting the drive in something either heavy duty plastic, or glass if you have a jar that big.  The reaction will cause a certain amount of heat as the acid reacts with the metals and creates hydrogen gas, and you don’t want your vessel melting on you, for obvious reasons.

You will also want to perform this exercise in either an outdoor or very open or well ventilated indoor environment.

The first thing to do is put on protective clothing, namely long sleeves, rubber/plastic gloves and a respirator, if you actually have one.  If not, take a big breath like you would if diving underwater, look away from the container and open the acid bottle.  If possible, hold the breath while pouring the acid into the container.  If not, breathe with the mouth away from the container of acid, as the fumes smell god awful and will irritate in small amounts.

I would recommend putting the drive in the container BEFORE the acid to reduce the possibility of spillage.  Anyway, once you’ve got your drive in a jar and are pouring the acid, it would be best to not get your face or body over the container in case the reaction is more violent than expected, which acid reactions can be at times.  Fill the jar enough to cover the drive with a bit to spare, and let sit for a few hours.  I’d say leave overnight, but one should probably watch this stuff and not let it sit.

I would NOT recommend closing the jar or container, as the reaction will produce highly flammable and potentially explosive hydrogen gas, the same thing that blew up the Hindenburg.

You can either wait for the acid to eat into the drive casing and begin corroding the platters, or you could do what I will do when the time comes.  Open the drive by removing the screws and/or rivets in the case itself, leaving the platters exposed and ready to be eaten by hungry acid.

Anyway, that’s my two cents or so on destroying hard drives with acid.  Have fun, stay safe and be well.

Very Exciting Indeed!

Again, I highly don’t recommend doing this unless you have extensive experience doing this sort of thing. After all, I don’t know who Christian really is so he may be an experienced chemist or a complete psychopath.

In Part II of this experiment, Christian fills us in on how to dispose of what remains after the hard drive is dissolved.

Talk to you then… Your friend,

Mike
Head Shredding Guy

Hey Folks,

I would imagine that there isn’t too many still walking around with a PDA. Better yet, how many people even remember what a PDA is? Do you remember the Palm Pilot?

Well here’s a little story…

Once upon a time, long long ago (at least in terms of computing) back in 1986, the very first portable hand held electronic device know as Personal Digital Assistants or PDAs was released upon the public.

These devices were designed to get rid of those old fashioned paper day planners in which you would right down all your appointments and important contacts. And perhaps, if you were so inclined, you would also annotate your own personal information (just in case someone found your day planner – they could return it) and other important information like account numbers and pins.

So these PDAs were able to perform all the same functions as a paper day planner or organizer, but just not as easily or conveniently.

They often included such functions as:

• Appointment calendar
• A to-do list (everyone loves a “to-do” list!)
• An address book
• A Calculator (a very novel idea indeed)
• A memo or “note” program.

These PDA’s would save infinite amounts of time required every year copying all the information over from last years planner. From the busy executive to the average stay at home mom, this was manna from heaven not to mention digital efficiency at its finest. Perfect organization; never again late for an appointment; and no more forgetting important dates like birthdays or anniversaries.

At first, you needed a little stick, known as a stylus, to write on the PDA’s glass screen in order to input your information. These PDAs tried to recognize your handwriting, but as you could probably guess, it never worked as well as writing on paper. After all, half the time we can’t even read our own writing, how in the world is a computer going to read it!

So a virtual keyboard was designed that would appear on the screen and you would tap each virtual key one at a time with your little stick to input your data. Of course this took forever, but at least once that data was put in, you never had to input it again.

Then, a brilliant engineer came up with the idea of adding button onto the face of the PDA in order to facilitate data entry. It didn’t take very long until a full mini keyboard was included on the front of the PDAs to streamline data entry.

Everything was going along just fine until one day someone realized that they were carrying both a cell phone and a PDA. And, as luck would have it, the cell phone had many of the same features as the PDA including contacts and the ever present, tool for all occasions: A Calculator.

So again, one day, another brilliant engineer came up with the idea of combining the PDA and the cell phone. After many years of careful thought, a new device was created to replace the cell phone and the PDA. This device was called the Smart Phone!

Today, it is very hard indeed to find a mere cell phone or a PDA… They are all but extinct. However, it is equally rare to find someone without a Smart Phone. These Smart Phones can now browse the internet, send personal messages, play music, and even play games for hours on end.

Of course Smart Phones can still make phone calls, create a “to-do” list, be used as a calculator, contain an appointment calendar, and create a memo… however they just don’t perform these functions very well. Many times, instead of using your Smart Phone, we still use the old fashioned methods of paper and pen for data functions. And if you want to make a quality phone call where you can actually hear the other person talk, it’s often best not to use your cell phone.

So although PDAs, and now Smart Phones, have not made us any more efficient or less likely to forget an important birthday or anniversary, there is a high likelihood that you did try to input some important sensitive information into that old PDA or even a new Smart Phone.

If that is the case, it might be worth while to get that old PDA shredded to make sure none of that information falls into the wrong hands.

Until next time…

Keep Totally Secure!

Mike
Head Shredding Guy

Hey Folks,

I just wanted to let you know that your friends at Total Secure Shredding are now accepting e-Waste at no charge.

What is e-Waste?

E-Waste is all obsolete or outdated computers, televisions, cell phones, printers, PDAs, and multitudes of other electronic devices used throughout the day every day.

Why not just throw this stuff into the regular trash?

There are serious environmental concerns that result from the disposal of e-Waste. Here are just a few of the hazardous elements and compounds that are routinely found in everyday electronics:

• Lead in cathode ray tubes and solder
• Mercury in switches and housing
• Arsenic trioxide as flame retardant
• Polybrominated flame retardants in plastic casing, cables, and circuit boards
• Selenium in circuit boards as power to supply rectifier
• Cadmium in circuit boards and semiconductors
• Chromium in steel as corrosion protection
• Cobalt in steel for structural strength and magnetivity

Ok, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you…

I have no idea what all this means! (I do know that it doesn’t sound like something I’d want seeping into my water supply.)

But here’s the great news, I don’t have to know and neither do you.

You see, I’ve arranged for my buddy Ed Pletner (an electronic waste recycling guru) who runs AVR Recycling to come by my shop every once in a while to pick up all this e-Waste stuff. He then turns around and commoditizes what he can or will just make sure everything is properly recycled with the proper environmental compliance.

And what’s even better, he doesn’t charge me to do all this! (So how does Ed make money? I don’t know that either – I’m just the messenger here!) (He also picks up our shredded hard drives for recycling – that a bonus for your Head Shredding Guy!)

So in any event, I’m not going to charge you either!!

And , if you head on over to Ed’s website, you’ll also see that he is an Asset Management Expert which means he can put together a custom asset management strategy based on your company’s needs; From proper packing and disassemble to eventual asset retirement.

This even can include providing all the necessary logistical services to remove all your no longer needed equipment.

Ed also can use his “inside connections” to arrange to resell your old equipment for its maximum value – Talk about a WIN-WIN!

The reason I’m even getting involved in all this is because I’ve been shredding your hard drives over the last couple of years. During that process, I’ve managed to collect a little mountain of old computers I had no idea what to do with. Now I have a place to get rid of all these old computers.

But, I also noticed that there were quite a few folks who would show up for drop-off paper documents for shredding but also needed to get some old computers recycled. They typically would take these computers elsewhere for recycling.

Now they can drop them here. But there is one caveat…

If you bring in a computer for FREE recycling and don’t want the hard drive shredded, that’s fine, but you will have to sign a liability waiver that Total Secure Shredding is NOT responsible for any data left on the electronics for recycling.

So, starting today, feel free to bring down your old electronics for FREE, environmentally friendly, recycling any time during normal drop-off shredding hours.

Those hours are:

Monday to Friday: 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Saturday: 10:00 am to 1:00 pm

Here’s the address:

3584 Hancock St.
San Diego, CA 92110

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to give me a call.

Until next time… Keep Totally Secure!

Your friend,

Mike
Head Shredding Guy
(619) 295-5474

P.S. Did you get a load of all those toxic thingys listed above… Who knew?

Finally, an article that puts the argument of Hard Drive Shred Size to bed!

Just a week ago, I about put myself into a coma by trying to explain the impracticality of trying to recover data from a hard drive that had been physically destroyed.

In short… IT’S IMPOSSIBLE

Ok… it is possible… but in the “I’m going to win the Powerball Lottery” kind of way.

It all comes down to how the data on a hard drive is encoded. Each manufacturer encodes their hard drives differently.  Then, to allow for the most data to be stored on these hard drives, the manufacturers are increasing the “areal density” (how tightly the data is encoded) on the drives.

This equates to extremely complex coding unique to each manufacturer.

But isn’t there something that can read the data off a random discarded piece of a hard drive?

In theory… Yes.

There is a process called magnetic force microscopy (MFM) photography that can see the data in its encoded format.

So then all we have to do is decode it – Right?

Well, not so fast.

First, there is the problem of size. Each one of these pictures would have to be saved somewhere for later decoding. For a 20 gigabite hard drive, all these MFM “pictures” would take up approximately 16 terabytes.

Then, here’s the fun part, each picture would then have to “be analyzed by an expert to interpret each bit” of information. Just the idea of this puts the notion of hard drive data recovery in the realms of impossible.

But were not done.

Now we have to know how the hard drive was encoded so we can know how to decode it.

To decode the data it would be necessary to know the manufacturer of the hard drive and the model of the hard drive, in fact. Most likely, one would even need to know the version of the firmware that was used to write the data. Even this information is not enough to decode the data, as one would need access to the manufacturer’s proprietary information concerning how that particular firmware/model drive actually wrote the data to the disk surface.

Still not satisfied that the data on your hard drive is not secure after running it through a hard drive shredder?

So even if we had all the information needed to decode the data, any hard drive that has been physically altered (shredded) will have significant damage to portions of the disks platters that will make the data impossible to retrieve no matter what.

The only response at this point is that data recovery from a physically destroyed hard drive, especially one that is in pieces, is impossible.

So I guess I need to restate my earlier comment…

You probably MORE LIKELY to win the lottery than having the data from a shredded hard drive restored.

To read the full story as published in Storage & Destruction Business magazine, here’s the link:

“Does Size Really Matter?”

As always, if you have any questions about hard drive shredding or have other document destruction concerns, please feel free to give us a call:

(619) 295-5474

Also, I’d love to hear your feedback about this topic in the comments section below.

Until next time… Keep Totally Secure.

Your friend,

Mike
Head Shredding Guy

P.S. I always knew that data recovery from a shredded hard drive was virtually impossible. But that paragraph in quotes above really eliminates the “virtually” part – Don’t ya think?

Fabrice Touree is the now the infamous Goldman Sachs mortgage trader who has suddenly become one of the sole scapegoats for the 2008 financial disaster.

So how does a midlevel 28 year old thrust himself into the limelight as a target for SEC investigators?

Although there doesn’t seem to be any admission by the SEC or Goldman Sachs that Touree was the ringleader who masterminded the creation of billions of dollars of dubious mortgage backed securities, he did do something to put himself into the hotseat.

It appears Mr. Touree simply threw out an old laptop that was later found “discarded in a a garbage area in a downtown apartment building” as indicted in a recent New York Times article.

The laptop was still receiving emails when the eventual user of this “recycled” laptop recognized the name in the emails, Touree, was also a name finding it’s way into news headlines.

An article by the Huffington Post points out that the e-mails received between Touree and his lawyer “discussed how to handle accusations that he and his employer, Goldman Sachs, had played a key role in engineering a near-financial apocalypse.”

This indeed has played out to be quite unfortunate for Mr. Touree since his case is apparently the only one being prosecuted by the SEC.

I would guess that Touree never thought for a second about the open email client on this casually discarded laptop.

Unfortunately, we often forget how much “stuff” is left sitting on those old computers. Most folks are replacing their computer every 2 to 3 years. And let’s be honest, 2 years is not that long ago!

You’re very likely to be using the same online email account, with the same bank with the same bank account number, and still living at the same address.

And, as we see in the case of Mr. Touree, we’re also not very likely to safeguard the information on our computers with passwords.

The above mentioned Huffington Post article goes into some of the current debate over the best way to dispose of the data on our hard drives from using software tools that “wipe” a hard drive to “the most surefire way to discard data” by actual physical destruction.

If you decide to read farther down the article to the comment section, you see the debate rage on about whether reformatting your disk drives is enough, to dropping your computer in salt water, to taking a hammer and giving your hard drive a few good whacks.

Personally, what I recommend is physical destruction. And to take it a step further, shredding so the hard drive is in multiple pieces.

Is this overkill?

Maybe. Although I still get questions as to whether the pieces are small enough.

(I won’t even get into the conversation I’ve had about the NSA and electron microscopes theoretically being able to read individual 0′s and 1′s off hard drive fragments!)

Anyway, when it comes to the secure destruction of hard drives, including my personal hard drives that need disposal, I feel 100% confident when all I have left is hard drive rubble.

Check out the video I took of the very first hard drive I shredded.

The cost of ensuring that the information held on your hard drive will never ever be seen by anyone else again is only $10 per hard drive when you bring the hard drive down to our secure shredding facility. You can stand by our view window while we run the hard drive through the shredder and then take a look at the pieces when we’re all done! (For an additional $10, we will remove the hard drive from your laptop or desktop computer and recycle the computer for you.)

Our secure drop-off shredding facility is located at:

3584 Hancock St.
San Diego, CA 92110

Hours of Drop-Off:

Mon through Fri: 8am to 5pm
Sat: 10am to 1pm

You don’t need to make an appointment. Just drop by whenever you’re ready.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to give me a call: (619) 295-5474

Until Next Time… Keep Totally Secure,

Your friend,

Mike
Head Shredding Guy