Death by Liquid Nitrogen
What's a good destructive experiment without some liquid nitrogen in the mix? We procured some, and then tried to shatter a hard drive by dropping it down a five story stairwell.
Round One
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After soaking the drive and dropping it once, not much happened. So we rinsed, repeated, and again not much happened.
Round Two
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A few more tries yielded better results. The protective shell of the drive case flew off, as well as the platter itself.
Video Recap
We recorded a ton of footage for this experiment, and we've compiled the best here. Be sure to stick around to the end of the clip if you've ever wanted to see what happens when you pour liquid nitrogen down a stairwell ;)
Results
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With the drive split apart and the platter out in the wild, we pretty much considered the drive dead and the data corrupted. Of course, since the platter is still perfectly intact, there is the possibility that some super hacker could restore the data. We will be keeping the platter safe, and issuing a less than perfect score.
Destruction Score (Out of 5)
Hard Drive Destruction








