Hard Drive Destruction 101

It’s not very often that I get to do this, and even less likely that I’ll film it for anyone to see. But, in this case, I thought I would take a dead hard drive and make it dead-er. What transpired is a lesson in destruction of a poor IDE drive, or sheer stupidity. So, join me as a take a drive from a (somewhat working state) to an all but certainly unusable state. Please also note, this is not something you should do unless you’re sure it’s okay to possibly destroy data and you wear protective glasses and/or gear. I didn’t wear any protective gear in this video, and it was dumb. Don’t be a dummy like me.

Briefly: It’s time for destruction! Join me as I attempt to obliterate a perfectly useless hard drive.

The drive I’m about to kill is a Western Digital 60GB IDE drive (Model Number WD600). Sure, it’s one of the older drives out there – and, since recovery options available weren’t working – the plan was to destroy it. I also wanted to take the drive apart and see the thing spinning, that would be cool too! Surely, I thought, I’m about to win a Darwin Award for this one.

So, without further delay, here’s the fun part:

Yes, you probably noticed I smashed the end of my plastic bench. That was stupid… and the camera went for a flip too. No Pain, no gain. How did the drive turn out? Here’s a look at the destruction a little more closely. Click on any of these pictures to biggen-state them.