What do you do with old hard drives to keep personal information private?

Question

I hit my old one with a sledgehammer several times.

Is this more secure than any wiping/deleting software etc?

Answer 1

Whip them apart, rip the data arms off and bend the platters in half.

Answer 2

Use a program like Kill Disk to completely erase your old hard drive. Programs such as these actually remove all information with no chance of recovery but still leave you with a viable hard disk for either resale or as a secondary disk if you need more storage.

www.killdisk.com

there is a free version as well as a pro version. Free version works just fine for me.

Also, even hitting your old HD with a sledgehammer is not fool proof as there is a chance data can still be restored and a magnet is not the most reliable way unless you have a powerful magnet.

Answer 3

The only real way is to burn or completely destroy them. As one way or another, if someone gets hold of it, they could still potentially get fragments of information if you use a magnet or something, such as passwords, etc....

Hope this helps

Answer 4

Hitting the HD with a sledgehammer is a good way of destroying it plus destroying things like that makes you feel good.

Happiness is a big hammer.

Answer 5

Yep, or run a magnet over them it's less strenuous.

Answer 6

about the same.as long as it doesn't work its about the same as wiping.