If you're the sort of person who worries about having jackboot thugs breaking down your door and taking your laptop, you might consider this "Media Artist Contingency Plan," which helpfully marks off the spot you should aim your high-speed drill if you need to nuke your hard-drive in a hurry. Of course, full-disk encryption is a little less messy and more reliable (though perhaps also a little less stylish and dramatic).
Having worked in the data recovery industry, drilling through a hard drive won't completely secure it contents.
ReplyDeleteIn a clean room, they will take the hard drive apart, clean the platters, and use special hardware and software to read around the hole at a very low speed. It usually takes hundreds of hours, but the recovery rate is pretty good.
Encryption is good for stopping a nosey kid or wife, but not a dedicated professional.
The most secure way to get rid of data is to completely destroy the medium it's stored on, i.e. melt it.
AztecRed, You're right, of course. When they come for your guns, you know they're gonna take your computer too. So what you need is a small explosive device permanently attached to the equipment. With a delayed detonation, you could take out one or two of the jack-booted thugs too if you're lucky.
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