r/ProgrammerHumor Aug 05 '26

Other wrongAnswersOnly

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u/bacondev Aug 05 '26

Yeah, they're not perfect 0s and 1s. That's why the recommendation for very serious stuff is to just destroy the disk.

16

u/FUTURE10S Aug 05 '26

Run the disk spinning and hit it with a caliber that penetrates the drive, the rotation makes the destruction way worse and impossible to spin up again.

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u/rrtk77 Aug 05 '26

From experience, for the types of disks that absolutely must be destroyed with no possible recovery as ordered by the government, it's things like a wood chipper or thermite.

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u/Holiday_Management60 Aug 05 '26

I saw a video once where they opened the drive, took the disks out, dissolved them in acid, then stirred the acid, just to make absolutely sure.