For drives that are still operational, we usually do a multi-overwrite. For drives that are not operational, we usually take them apart, rub the platters with the drive magnet, and microwave them for a while in a spare microwave.

After wiping one way or another, we hire a company to shred the discs - drive and all. For that matter, we've seen some shredders large enough to drop entire servers into (but they make larger pieces). http://www.semshred.com/content291.html has more information.

We've also hired a special shredder truck from Tennessee that could shred metal. Neighbors came out to see if an airplane had landed in the parking lot because the thing was so loud. The particle size was larger than what you see in this photo, but these were from our stack of low-sensitivity drives that had accumulated.

I've heard stories of military drives being sanded down and the particles mixed with concrete, but I have not personally witnessed that process.

one must assume that all garbage is monitored by the state. Anything less would be a pre-911 mentality. - Decius

I just wanted to make sure this quote was taken out of context and forever remembered...

Decius wrote:
I have some hard drives. I want to throw them out. They have data on them. Some of that data is personal correspondence and some of these hard drives are rather old and I have no idea what is on them, but I'd rather not provide that data to whoever happens to be buying stuff from the local computer recycling center on the off chance its personal. Furthermore, if the government is going to hold that police searches of garbage can be conducted without either a search warrant or any constitutionally required factual predicate than one must assume that all garbage is monitored by the state. Anything less would be a pre-911 mentality. If you are willing to provide the state with warrantless access to your hard drives there is really no point in complaining about 4th amendment issues or warrantless searches at borders, for example. So, I can't just throw these drives out.

Unfortunately, my local computer recycling center makes stern warnings that they are not responsible for data on devices given to them. I don't see why they won't just buy a degauser, but I'm guessing they don't have one, and I'm not going to go out and drop 2 grand on an industrial degauser for my loft.

This puts me in an odd position that I'm sure many of you have also been in:

What do you do with old hard drives? Do they become a permanent part of your electronics junk pile, carried with you everytime you move? Do you know of an inexpensive way to destroy them?

If they're still attached to a linux box 'shred /dev/sda', otherwise, I smash them with a hammer. If the media is dented, for all practical purposes, noone is going to get any data off of it.

This by the way is a strong advertisement for full-disk encryption.

I buy usb enclosures and use them for storage and backup.

Decius wrote:
What do you do with old hard drives? Do they become a permanent part of your electronics junk pile, carried with you everytime you move? Do you know of an inexpensive way to destroy them?

I'm using LogiCubes at work but for home use I like DBAN.

http://www.dban.org/

Quick ISO CD burn. Pop it in, go. Defaults to 3 passes of a DOD algorithm. You can tune the settings, choosing more passes, different algorithms.

Decius wrote:
Do you know of an inexpensive way to destroy them?

Thermite?

Decius wrote:
I have some hard drives. I want to throw them out.

Am I the only person here who just throws them away? I care about privacy, I just think the chances that someone will go through my crap * the private/sensitive nature of my crap is a value lower than the value of the time required to shred hard drives.

Decius wrote:

What do you do with old hard drives? Do they become a permanent part of your electronics junk pile, carried with you everytime you move? Do you know of an inexpensive way to destroy them?

Press the smoothie button.

I've heard stories of military drives being sanded down and the particles mixed with concrete, but I have not personally witnessed that process.

I've told a few people about this and all laughed. Very funny 'overkill.'

Jello wrote:

I've heard stories of military drives being sanded down and the particles mixed with concrete, but I have not personally witnessed that process.

I've told a few people about this and all laughed. Very funny 'overkill.'

You'd be surprised. I did a project for a government agency that didn't want me to email them the code. They didn't want it on a disc either. They wanted it delivered on green bar and would have someone re-key it! Of course, I had to make my program do an check to make sure they entered it correctly. I'd sure hate to be that person :)