hmm, off your meds i see

For the next drive you want to obliterate, it can be done with much less time and effort. Delete the sensitive files (if any) and then use one of the free "wipe" programs to clear the space. When that finishes, pull out the drive and let it spend the night in a bucket of water. Drill a hole first in the housing if you want to be sure it gets soaked. DONE!

There's likely nothing on most hard drives that would present a risk if it came into the hands of an evil doer. Translation - you're being more than a bit paranoid about it.

Snidely my good fellow :-)

Time? Effort? Let's see-

Comp was unused for a year so it would have to be re-hooked up. This means unhook current machine monitor etc and rehook to old comp and triple check it all before firing up. Next it's XP Pro so It would prolly run then I'd have to find a drive wipe program. Then download that. Then install. Then run it. Then I spose slick off the HD for good measure. Then dismantle the whole bloody mess and hook up the current comp again. Triple check etc. Monitor. Then pull out the HD. Then drill a hole in it. What size drill bit? Is the case or contents hardened or mild steel? Maybe I should grind the hole into it - dig out the grinder, find the disks, clamp the HD to a bench outside so sparks don't catch the garage on fire. Goggles, ear plugs.....

Then draw water into a container and submerge the HD in that. I'm not convinced water would attack that disk so maybe add some HCl acid. So there'd be fumes from that which might attack various surfaces nearby (voice of experience don't cha know). Not sure the HCl would attack that disk surface either. Maybe maybe not. Put the whole thing in the back yard to difuse the fumes (kill some grass prolly). Rinse the acid off. Find some rubber gloves so not burn my hands. Wear a mask to not breath the fumes. All of that stuff I have (except the HCl which I have Muriatic Acid which as I recall is 1/10 normal HCl) and it has to be got out (if I can remember just where to look) then put back away.

Consider my original post. Process took approximately 8 minutes. 8! Make that 8.5 minutes if you add up the 2 seconds it takes each week for 15 weeks to deposit each remaining pieces in the waste basket.

Gotta think these things out.

As for the assumption of paranoia the word supercilious comes to mind. Not unexpected considering the source.

:-)

Drill'n......Bang'n.........Cutt'n Too much like work. Fire pit, cooler with a few beers, couple friends sitting around telling lies, and, joila, toasty unuseable HD.

They contain a secret refrigerator magnet. It almost shameful to throw those away.

we just destroyed 4 hard drives and have lots of magnets...just don't get your fingers caught between two of them....

I worked at a small company that did contract design work for energy products. We got all sorts of nuts. I assisted on the design/ build of a perpetual motion machine using super magnets arraigned in a cylindrical mounting frame. Oh, the waste of time and money. Yes the investors got nothing for some crazy idea but at least I got to build an interesting device. The magnets were pretty cool though. I had all the cad files for the machine but my computer died and I made no effort to save the hard drive.

I found this thread on the side bar and hope you can help. I have a older Mac that totally died. There is no chance of ever doing a wipe. I refuse to toss it with the existing hard drive intact. So, how do I get the frame apart to even get to the hard drive?

Search the model number on youtube. Might find someone showing how to replace or take it apart for something.

Westelle - A sledge hammer?

Look for screws, often on the bottom in little wells or pockets and start unscrewing them ... sometimes you have to pry a bezel loose or pop a cover off, but they will come apart.

As I reported last year, I like pounding my old H/Ds with a hand sledge. Only takes a couple of minutes, and it gets some stress out of me in a very short time.

DA

West: Read and Weep.
21 Essential Tools For Taking Apart All Your Macs

Here is a link that might be useful: Dunno to Laugh or Cry

I have a friend with an old iMac that died so the drive can't be wiped. There's some personal stuff on there, emails and pics but no financial information. It seems like some work to take the thing apart. When I get a couple of minutes I'm going to locate the drive within the chassis and then drill a couple of holes right through the whole thing. That should do enough damage that the average person won't be able to recover anything.

Mike,

For the life of me I never gave a thought to pulling a H/D and placing it under my drill press. The concept has possibility. Of course, if I go that route and miss the stress relief I might one day go off the deep end, and that wouldn't be pretty. :-)

DA

For those of you with the dead computers, just take the drive out and attach it to another computer, then wipe it using the common Darik's Boot And Nuke (DBAN) or any other wiping program. Try not to wipe your current working drive though.

For the drillers - I'm not sure that would really make the non-drilled portions of the discs unreadable, using fancy data recovery methods.

And for those resorting to sledge hammers and the like, I really wish I could get my hands on your drives - what the hell do you have on there anyway, that DOD 3-pass or RCMP TSSIT OPS-II multipass can't destroy ?

Maybe it's for the stress relief.
If so, I'm all for it.