Ask HN: Easiest way to ensure a HD is not readable?

1 pointwatmough4 comments

Hi, I have quite a few old hard-drives from 80 MB upwards, that I'd like to throw away. The first three to throw away have been soaking in a bucket of salty water for the last 72 hours. Is this a reasonable way to ensure they are not readable?

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If you're serious about this, you need to destroy the platters as much as possible. I'd smash the drives open with a sledgehammer (faster than taking the screws out) then smash the platters into as many tiny pieces as possible. For good measure, you could then throw the pieces into a bucket with some nice strong magnets.

Drive metal stakes right through them. I don't know if this will make it impossible to recover data, but it'd be difficult.

Thanks, I was hoping to avoid using my sledgehammer though!

Seconded. Alternatively you can just take a power drill and drill a hole straight through the case into all the platters.

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