Advice requested on proper disposal of Seagate ST3000DM001 disk drives

[Eric Smith]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 6:51 AM, systems_glitch via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> Burning of potassium permanganate to manganese greensand will often get it
> going. You are on your own for figuring out how to do that.
>

Multiple sources, including Robert on this list, tell me just to use
magnesium ribbon. I just looked it up; it's inexpensive and should be very
easy to use.


> Thermite is not the ultimate destructive force some people seem to think it
> is. If you're trying to totally liquefy the platters you'll probably need
> to remove them from the drives and put them in something capable of
> containing the thermite for at least a little while (e.g. graphite
> crucible). The usual, "put it in a flower pot" will likely either result in
> a mess or a smallish hole through the platter, which really isn't any
> better than running a drill through it.
>

All the more reason to experiment with it!

Elsewhere it's been suggested that somewhere between 0.25 and 0.5 kg of
thermite ought to do the job without needing to disassemble the drive
first. I've got sixteen drives to experiment with.