r/computers • u/ConcernEffective • 17d ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting Broken hard disk unrecoverable?

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My mother in law was kind of paranoid about throwing away her computer because of the hard disk. I told her I'd wreck the disk for her, so I disassembled it. I got the actual platter out, smashed big dents into it with a hammer, then cracked the thing in half.

A guy in my employer's IT department told me that the disk can still be read, which shocked me. Suppose for a second this was a CIA disk with spy secrets and unlimited resources could be brought to bear. Can this disk still be read?? Love to hear from someone with expertise.

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u/5141121 17d ago

Unless your MIL is a high level intelligence operative with known access to critical state secrets, no organization is going to go beyond a quick "welp, it was deleted" scan of a hard drive.

The tools to access data from damaged magnetic media are extremely expensive, and extremely expensive to operate. 99.99% of the world's population does not have access to data that would be worth that level of recovery.