An Economical Method for Securely Disintegrating Solid-State Drives Using Blenders

Abstract

Pulverizing solid-state drives (SSDs) down to particles no larger than 2 mm is required by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) to ensure the highest level of data security, but commercial disintegrators that achieve this standard are large, heavy, costly, and often difficult to access globally. Here, we present a portable, inexpensive, and accessible method of pulverizing SSDs using a household blender and other readily available materials. We verify this approach by pulverizing SSDs with a variety of household blenders for fixed periods of time and sieve the resulting powder to ensure appropriate particle size. Among the 6 household blenders tested, sharp-blade blenders with high peak power (1,380 W) and high blade speed (28,000 RPM) properly disintegrate 2.5-inch SSDs in less than 20 min. This method is useful for pulverizing small numbers of SSDs that contain secret information when on-site conventional disintegrators are not available or practical.