As my friend Mike writes, “I don’t need it but I want it.”

He’s referring to the Garner PD-8400 Physical Hard Drive Destroyer, a piece of hardware the size of a desktop tower that folds hard drives in half. This device would have come in handy numerous times through the years when I was getting rid of old computers but had to spend hours wiping the hard disk clean before feeling comfortable downcycling them.

Of course, in real life the Destroyer has a more valuable application: to eliminate the possibility of a nefarious individual being able to retrieve data from hard drives that have been disposed of (like the ones you can see piled up at your local transfer station electronics recycle bins). This it does in ways that meet compliance standards set forth in HIPAA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

According to the Garner-Products site, the machine even comes with a “convenient carrying case.” No need to risk removing your SCSI or IDE hard drives from a secure location before they’ve been pulverized (a process that takes a mere 75 seconds).

Always looking for an upsell opportunity, the company recommends that you use its Destroyer in tandem with one of its degaussers for “the ultimate combination in data security.” But, hey, I’m not running the Pentagon here!

Posted on November 7th, 2007 by dian