Safest way to securely dispose of hard drives?

[gmj]

Nuke it from orbit....it's the only way to be sure.

[edutech4schools]

I put my one in a fire. The next day I was surprised to find an odd abstract shape that looked like a silver stalagmite with arms about 4inches high. thought it would have just bubbled down in to a messy pool.

[waltmanc]

I agree with jinnantonnixx - very wasteful, just use some disk-wiping software, unless, of course the disk is broken, then the drill comes out.

[Garacesh]

About a week ago I had to destroy our 2.5" finance HDD's..

Derpy moment.. Forgot they were made of glass.. Hurt pride ensued when I broke one by hand.

[Pete10141748]

Just the other day I passed a bunch of old recovery disks (which I no longer have the drive to read/wipe/reuse anyway) to the Site Agent here for destroying. She had a whale of a time with a hammer, drill and various other objects used to obliterate the disks!

[LiamH]

I used to like taking them to bits, nicking the really strong magnets out of them and the disks do make quite good air hockey style pucks.

would love one of these though

Data Security - Shredder - YouTube

[Earthling]

+1 for the hammer, though I prefer a 4lb club-hammer in close conjunction with a 4" or 6" nail.

[TomDunlop]

We use software to securely erase them, then it’s a quick dismantle and mix all the parts up in a box. Our local scrap yard gives us good money for the dismantled drives.

[pcstru]

Some charcoal, a container, some flame, some sand, a raw result and some paint and machining for a final product. Data recovery from that - not in this universe (and as an aside, the alu used on HD castings is pretty good quality).

[I'm sure someone will point out that this is a dangerous thing to do and may invalidate your warranty].

[rich_tech]

I have used the disc companies tools on a couple of them before to write zeros to the disks, takes a good while but in effect I think it just fills the drive with zero's, that being said, when its been smashy time, hammer and screwdriver/chisel as needed - powerdrill can come in handy too for going through the platens.

[Galway]

If the drive is dead then I dismantle and get the magnets and destroy the platters.

If its a fully working drive then I software wipe the drive .... destroying a perfectly good drive is what I would expect a non tecky person to do and baffles the hell out of me.

[LiamH]

Or if your still stuck, give them to a teacher, they tend to totally destroy and FUBAR everything we hand them :X

[SYNACK]

Or if your still stuck, give them to a teacher, they tend to totally destroy and FUBAR everything we hand them :X

Only if you tell them it is important and delicate

[Sirbendy]

Some we did on our old site were dropped from the 3rd floor, down the middle of the stairwell onto concrete. That was quite fun. Mind you, I accidentally booted an entire tower down the stairs too..such is the PITA of my mobility issues. That made some interesting noises on the way down. Nasty little cut-price beige box it was..serves it ruddy well right,too.

Live drives, I software nuke. Dead/ancient/unknown drives either get the DT pillar drill, a lump hammer, or a vice and wrecker bar for leverage, depending on how annoyed I am.

[CESIL]

The UBCD includes

HDDErase that uses the drive's built in secure erase commands...takes way less time than dban and is

said to be

much more secure...