Optical media destruction Was: Hard drives v. CF/Smart media/etc.

[Alexander Klimov <alserkli () inbox ru>]

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005, Herman Frederick Ebeling, Jr. wrote:
> From: Brian Loe
> :  Better than optical? Surely you've by now nuked a CD - in my experience,
> : between that and breaking one, the data is pretty much toast.
> :
> : If you break a CD, do you think you could tape it together and get it to
> : spin up?!

This is not the right question :-) If the CD would not spin up it
`will stop your kid sister from reading your files' but it will *not*
`stop major governments from reading your files' -- they are quite
likely to employ device with slowly moved laser instead of spinning
the media.

> Can't say that I have, YET.  But *IF* I really wanted to "kill" a CD
> I'd nuke it, take it outside to the sidewalk drop it put my foot on
> it and do the "twist" on top of it.  Flip it over and repeat, THEN
> break it up into a "gazillion" pieces.

It is quite possible to resurrect a lot of paper from `gazillion'
pieces:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_shredder#Unshredding
So, I guess, it is possible to combine a single CD, and once it is
combined you can use the above (fictitious?) device. Of course, this
device can be used for finding matches in the first place.

-- 
Regards,
ASK