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***TomG*** · 06-20-2012, 05:00 PM

On my way out of work last Thursday I ran into the IT guy and he had an armload of hard drives. I asked what he was up to and he said that they were bad drives and he needed to drill holes in them before throwing them away. When I mentioned that I was heading up north for the holiday weekend and planned to do a bit of shooting he volunteered a few of them for "drilling" purposes. After "drilling" a few few of them, it soon became apparent that there is a great deal of difference in power between different calibers and firearms so I decided to do a little non-scientific stopping power survey and I thought you guys might enjoy seeing the results.

The first drive was victim to the venerable 1911 .45 ACP. The firearm of choice was my Officers model, which I build last year, and the cartridge was a 230 grain full metal jacket. The results were disappointing. The bullet impacted the top edge of the drive and only penetrated about halfway through. I guess that's what a heavy, slow moving round like the 45 ACP is supposed to do, but I expected more damage. The entry is shown in the pic below. I didn't bother with the exit side because there was none. All of the energy was absorbed by the hard drive and consequently it flew about 30 feet after impact.

The second drive fell victim to my son's Remington 700 SPS varmint rifle in .223. This shot was at 100 yards and was dead center and pretty much easy in and easy out. The drive was definitely deactivated.

Next is the 7.62 x 54 fired through one of the Mossin-Nagant rifles the boys and I received for Christmas. The rifle is a Russian bolt action, introduced in the late 1800's. There were upwards of 20 million of them produced over the years so there are plenty of them and ammo to feed them available for not much money. These rifles were $79 and 230 rounds of ammo was $72. They hit pretty hard and had no trouble penetrating the hard drive at 50 yards.

The next images show the aftermath of the good old 30-06 fired from my M1 Garand. The damage was impressive. The entry hole was pretty much the size of the bullet but the exit was around .75 and the layers in the drive looked like they were melted together.

Ok, now for the heavy stuff. The following pics show the result of a slug fired from a 12 gauge Remington 1100. The damage was startling to say the least, but the round penetrated the drive so some energy was wasted, unlike the final candidate.

And the winner is.....#000 buck shot fired from a Remington 1100. The drive literally exploded and pieces flew in all directions after being impacted by the 8 .36 caliber pellets which penetrated the front of the drive and drove the three platters completely out the rear. We were only able to find two of the three platters. The third platter as well as the bearings were just gone.
Buck shot in a 12 gauge in my opinion is the hands down winner in the stopping power category.

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