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Re:Terry Pratchett's unfinished novels destroyed by steamroller by excalibur on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @11:24AM (#15132899)
This is dramatic and certainly renders the drive itself useless, but this is not how you securely destroy data. The bits on those platters are still largely recoverable. Do Terry a favor and run that drive over a degausser (or at least a really big magnet) before putting it in a museum. And let everyone know you did it. Remove the temptation for someone to steal it, attempt a forensic recovery, and try to sell unfinished Terry Pratchett novels that the author never intended to see the light of day.
Re:Terry Pratchett's unfinished novels destroyed by steamroller by Johnny555 on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @12:07PM (#15133309)
That sounds like a lot of money to spend to get fragments of notes for an unfinished book that you can't even sell as "Terry Pratchett's Unfinished Book" because his estate would sue you. Not to mention the legal risk of stealing the hard drive fragments then publicly admitting that you did it when you publish your book.
Re:Terry Pratchett's unfinished novels destroyed by steamroller by excalibur on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @12:24PM (#15133468)
Well when step one is "steal hard drive from museum", you can assume that the sale and (initial) distribution are unlikely to be conducted above-board. Depending on one's access to sophisticated forensic tools, this may still be a difficult undertaking to extract any profit from. But money isn't the only possible motive.