Its simple and easy procedure:

1 ) Buy a big can
2 ) Put the drive inside
3 ) Buy 50 kg of enriched uranium or plutonium
4 ) Put it all into the can with the drive
5 ) Fire several neutrons on the can
6 ) Watch for the nuclear explosion burns your drive. If it doesn't vaporize it entirely, don't worry, there will be no one alive near it to take your data.

That's overkiill :P

throw it from the 50th floor building

LOL... I think format is enough though you can still try this stuff:

http://www.jcsd.k12.ms.us/jctc/mig-welding.JPG

I understand they're good at erasing things.

They've been practicing with the Apollo 11 moon mission tapes. :1orglaugh

Some of you guys are just paranoid !

Last time I looked into it (which was admittedly a few years ago, things may have changed) a "full" format does not clear sectors, it just verifies that it can READ each one.

So a quick or full format is not going to get rid of your data at all.

If there is nothing illegal on the hard drive, I would worry about it. To much energy spent on an old drive.

put it in the microwave!

what you have to hide so bad you need it destroyed is my question?

Go ahead and put metal in your microwave :1orglaugh

If he told you that he'd have to kill you

Zero fill or secure erase should be sufficient protection for most non paranoid and/or law abiding citizens. :1orglaugh

Stick it in the oven for a while. Or BBQ it.

Some of the answers in this thread are just hilarious.

If you want the data gone for good, this is the process:

1. Wipe the drive with a secure wipe program
2. Take the drive apart and drill holes in the platters
3. fuck up the platter surface with a grinder
4. throw the platters away in different dumpster

Or, use a hard drive shredder.

Water won't do it, the oven won't do it, and you don't want to put metal platters in your microwave :1orglaugh

Really, the OP sounds like something pedobear would ask

Soak it in salt water then smash it to pieces

if its only a few GB then copy windows directory, paste, paste, paste, paste, drive full, data gone.

to make extra sure, put a sticker on it that says "John Travolta home porno"

I was searching for a magnetic knife rack today and came across a DIY article on using magnets from a hard drive to build one (which somehow reminded me of this thread, as I have a bunch of old hard drives as well):

http://www.instructables.com/id/EQ4MZBNFDJEV2ZJ2UJ/

So I went out and bought a knife rack, then came home and started pulling apart hard drives. I ended up with a bunch of magnets and even more platters. Then I thought about a hard drive wind chime, and google returns:

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/arti...WindChimeStory

So yea, I'll be making a few wind chimes this weekend. The magnets I'm scared of, though; don't know what to do with them as I bought the knife rack. A couple of the big ones from an old SATA drive can cause some physical damage if one isn't careful.

Anyway.
</Worthless bump>

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4OYGjUrdll...400/coyote.jpg

http://www.whereistheoutrage.net/wor...wylie_trap.jpg

http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/a...80_604919a.jpg

Interesting, thank you.


.

Yeah I would say drill a tome of holes through it.

Piss on it , that usually works. :)

No big deal.
Just use one of those programs to overwrite everything nineteen times
Or open it up and destroy the actual media itself

Did any of you maniacs see on court tv.. this guy he I don't know kills or rapes or does something and then there is this evidence on a disk, right. Anyway well this guy he ends up cutting up the disk right there in the interrogation room .. right in front of everyone .. so they're all over hell way up the data recovery guys asses and all of this .. finally some pseudo genius SCOTCH TAPES IT BACK TOGETHER and pulls most of the data off of it ..

That was amazing.

PS: Wouldn't passing a magnet over the drive completely destroy the data.. 100% not recoverable? I mean how the hell are you going to recover data from what a random magnetic field has "written"... forget about it

Well why dont u piss on it!

Fire, maybe?

DBAN is enough,nothing else nothing more.