20050917 Recover that

Having accumulated three dead hard drives, I decided it was time to make a small project of physically destroying each of them. In particular, one had unreferenced but likely recoverable information about thousands of students because of a database migration I was contracted to do earlier this year. I had that one mostly disassembled but didn't have a small enough Torx to remove the platter properly, so I figured I would just pry/bend it out. After all, the object was to mutilate it. Surprise! It's not made of metal (as the last time I destroyed a drive, maybe 5 years ago)—it's made of ceramic. It dramatically exploded into uncountable razor shards covering not only my dining room where I was working, but extending into the kitchen and living room. I'm glad I was wearing reading glasses. The largest remaining piece can't be more than a half a square cm, and most are so small they appear to be glitter. Recover that, hah.