a sufficient force to crush a hard drive forces in the range of approximately 1500 to 2 300 pounds per square inch are sufficient to crush the hard drive and shatter the platters the force when applied to the platters of a removable electronic storage device such as a computer 39 s hard drive will generally render the platters unusable referring to fig5 in another embodiment of crushing device 10 the components employed to bias cylinder rod 86 including electric pump 14 power cylinder 80 and their corresponding parts as shown in fig1 are replaced by a hand crank 130 a plurality of gears collectively denoted by 132 and a manual cylinder 134 hand crank 130 is affixed on the outside of chamber side wall 26 to a gear 132 a by a suitable fastener such that gear 132 a is rotationally fixed to handle 130 manual cylinder 134 has an outer support shell 136 and a moveable internal rod not shown which replaces cylinder rod 86 threaded through hole 76 threadedly receives hand cylinder outer shell 136 in a manner identical to that of power cylinder 80 as described above with reference to fig1 the moveable internal rod not shown has two linear sets of teeth 132 b formed on opposite sides and that extend through slots not shown formed through support shell 136 teeth 132 b are interengaged with and retain.