Curved swords are for...

[Jag]

stabbing a PC full of child porn as the cops come to bust you.

Agents investigating a Palm Coast man for possessing child pornography found their suspect in his underwear and holding a samurai sword, which he stabbed into the side of a computer, federal authorities say.

[Odin]

I'm not completely clueless with a sword and I know my way around a computer, but I think I'd have a hell of a time hitting the hard drive through the side of the case. Not to mention the very real danger of death by electrocution.

[Paingod]

It's cute that he tried - but the odds of hitting the hard drive, through the case, hard enough to penetrate it, AND shatter the platters is mightly slim.

What the dude needed was a .50cal round rigged to a kill switch over the drive. Cops bust in, you hit a button and the round goes off, utterly demolishing the drive. Better than hitting it with a high powered magnet, but less effective than melting it into slag.

[$iljanus]

"For the ultimate in hard drive data erasure, only a Hattori Hanzo sword will do!"

[Holman]

What the dude needed was a .50cal round rigged to a kill switch over the drive.

It would definitely be a more interesting story if he had fired a bullet with the cops at his door.

[El Guapo]

It's cute that he tried - but the odds of hitting the hard drive, through the case, hard enough to penetrate it, AND shatter the platters is mightly slim.

What the dude needed was a .50cal round rigged to a kill switch over the drive. Cops bust in, you hit a button and the round goes off, utterly demolishing the drive. Better than hitting it with a high powered magnet, but less effective than melting it into slag.

You are much better at child pornography than him!

[Paingod]

You are much better at child pornography than him!

Uhhh... I really don't think so. It's the hardware I know, not the kiddie porn.

I've hammered on old drives to see what kind of force it would take to actually shatter the platters inside before sending a computer off to the dump to make sure personal data was "relatively safe" and it's surprising what kind of force it takes to break them sometimes. A magnet will wipe out surface data, but there are procedures for recovering data even after that. Formatting the drive doesn't actually erase the data, it just obscures it. Running a randomized series of 1's and 0's across the entire drive 4 times makes it very difficult to recover data, but not technically impossible. The best way to completely secure an old drive is to melt it down. The second best way I can think of is to completely shatter the drive - then it would take a massive effort to try and piece it together and who knows if it would even work. Hence, the .50cal round. Unless the guy had something like thermite to melt the drive at the push of a button...

It would definitely be a more interesting story if he had fired a bullet with the cops at his door.

Agreed. A .50cal round would thunder so loud that they'd probably have shat themselves before entering.

[Isgrimnur]

It would definitely be a more interesting story if he had fired a bullet with the cops at his door.

Agreed. A .50cal round would thunder so loud that they'd probably have shat themselves before entering.

Oh, I'm sure that there would have been more than one bullet hole through the hard drive after that. And the suspect.

[Anonymous Bosch]

In my experience, a hydrochloric (muriatic) acid burn was always the preferred method of ultimate hard drive destruction.

[Odin]

The second best way I can think of is to completely shatter the drive - then it would take a massive effort to try and piece it together and who knows if it would even work.

At one of the places where I worked, we used a drill press. It shattered the platters into a mixture of tiny shards and powder. There was going to be absolutely no recovering data from those. A hand-drill would probably work just as well.

[The Meal]

Some drives are made with aluminum substrate in the disks, and some with glass. Aluminum generally don't shatter, but glass certainly will.

(I'm working as a development engineer on 2.5" mobile hard drives with a specific focus on designing in shock robustness. This has been my primary duty since joining the industry in 1998, though I've worked on everything from 10-platter SCSI half-high 3.5" form-factor units to 1" rotating magnetic media devices which technically could not be called "hard drives" as they used their own proprietary connection to the host device.)

[Anonymous Bosch]

The second best way I can think of is to completely shatter the drive - then it would take a massive effort to try and piece it together and who knows if it would even work.

At one of the places where I worked, we used a drill press. It shattered the platters into a mixture of tiny shards and powder. There was going to be absolutely no recovering data from those. A hand-drill would probably work just as well.

A drill press should definitely get the job done. But if you're going the power tool route, as long as you have a Torx screwdriver handy, I would think the simplest method of destruction would likely be to just disassemble the hard drive and remove the platters and other components. Then simply sand or grind the platter surfaces into oblivion. And as an added bonus, you could turn the hard drive magnets into nifty little (non-kid-friendly) toys.

[Bakhtosh]

The point is to destroy the HDD at a moment's notice in such a way as to make recovery of the data a statistical impossibility.

Considering the points made here, I think you keep the data on an external drive and suspend a large sledge from the ceiling above it. The hammer would probably have 3 points on it to focus the force into a small cross section and ensure contact with the drive even if the hammer drifts a bit off center. As long as the drive is spinning, it should be demolished (operational shock), and would be likely FUBAR even if idle. A small logic circuit could, upon receiving the signal, break then make the drive's power supply - ensuring it spins up, and 2 seconds later trigger the sledge release.

[Odin]

A drill press should definitely get the job done. But if you're going the power tool route, as long as you have a Torx screwdriver handy, I would think the simplest method of destruction would likely be to just disassemble the hard drive and remove the platters and other components. Then simply sand or grind the platter surfaces into oblivion. And as an added bonus, you could turn the hard drive magnets into nifty little (non-kid-friendly) toys.

Wait - how is removing a bunch of screws by hand, taking the thing apart and pulling out the innards "simpler" than jabbing it once with a drill?

[Anonymous Bosch]

A drill press should definitely get the job done. But if you're going the power tool route, as long as you have a Torx screwdriver handy, I would think the simplest method of destruction would likely be to just disassemble the hard drive and remove the platters and other components. Then simply sand or grind the platter surfaces into oblivion. And as an added bonus, you could turn the hard drive magnets into nifty little (non-kid-friendly) toys.

Wait - how is removing a bunch of screws by hand, taking the thing apart and pulling out the innards "simpler" than jabbing it once with a drill?

Heh, sloppy phrasing on my part. I meant "simplest" as in a DIY power tool solution that most people could easily pull off at home (i.e. if you don't happen to have access to said drill press).

[xwraith]

What an idiot.

Everybody knows that curved swords are for slashing damage.

[Fitzy]

Stabbing?

After reading the article I'm sympathetic with the woman.

Alex Lovell — known as “Biggie” in his local gamer scene — is an avid player of “PlayerUnknown’s Battleground,” a multiplayer online fighting game. As he told the Oregonian/OregonLive, Lovell has been recently logging 12 to 13 hours a day playing the game. The regimen also required “exercises for his hands, wrists and shoulders and also practicing mouse moves and techniques to maximize performance,” the paper reported.

“I didn’t see it coming, but it makes sense that it happened. She obviously didn’t want anyone else to have me, so — samurai sword.”

“The feeling I had when I won the fight with my bare hands is just absolutely the best feeling,” Lovell boasted this week from the hospital. “I’ve played all the sports, won big games, landed some decent tricks on my snowboard. This was better.”

I think it was justified. She should have slashed.

[Skinypupy]

“I wasn’t a sweaty nerd, more of an Ethlete,” Lovell told the Oregonian/OregonLive.

Now I want to stab him.

[Jaymann]

If she really wanted to hurt him she should have logged into his games and given away all his equipment.

[Smoove_B]

Have we verified that this guy isn't someone that hangs out here? Because I think there are a few OOers that play PUBG 8+ hours a day.

[EvilHomer3k]

If it didn't say Washington Post I would have thought it was an article on The Onion.

[Jag]

[Octavious]

Have we verified that this guy isn't someone that hangs out here? Because I think there are a few OOers that play PUBG 8+ hours a day.

I was nowhere near Oregon!

[Archinerd]

. He played too many videos games, Javier would later explain to the police, and now he was cheating on her, she claimed. She knew the signs. Tinder on his phone. Scratches across his back. A girl’s hair in their shower drain. In the weak phone glow, Javier allegedly started hacking.

There's a swipe left joke in there somewhere but I can't find it.

[Holman]

Slash left.