Do you keep dark, mysterious secrets in your hard drive? If you do, best make sure that you toast that storage good before you get rid of it, lest put all that digital information about you accessible to anyone with enough savvy to recover them. The Manual Hard Drive Destroyer (MHDD), as its name implies, adds another level of destruction to your hard drive in the undying quest to render any data footprint irrecoverable.
Perfect for paranoid privacy types, secret agent spies and avid porn collectors, the MHDD is a tabletop box that comes with a slot for the hard disk and a cranking handle. Simply put the hard drive in, turn the handle a full eight rotations (takes approximately 15 seconds) and you’re done – with the SATA storage mangled at a 90-degree angle. Since the whole thing is bent, the platters won’t be able to spin, preventing a good chunk of hackers, data thieves and law enforcers (this one’s especially for you, avid porn collector) from being able to access its contents.
Designed as a low-cost alternative to commercial-grade electric HDD destroyers and degaussers, the Manual Hard Drive Destroyer measures 8 x 12 x 23.5 inches and weighs a hefty 70 pounds. It works with all types of hard drives (including heavy-duty, extra-shielded ones) and comes with an optional motorized mode, in case your right arm’s a little too used up to manage the strength requirements.
Will butchering the drive, along with formatting a couple of times before that (and a media eraser, if you have one), render anything previously written to it fully irretrievable? I reckon not. Anyone with enough technology and the cash to make it happen can probably still recover parts of the data, if they were so inclined. The question is, what would you have to be up to in order to get someone with that kind of technical power go after you, in the first place? The identity thieves next door wouldn’t even bother.
[Data Destroyer via Red Ferret]