How to dispose of old hard drives

rmg1

There's a company in Sheffield (South Yorks) that will take them off your hands.  They do data recovery and can always use old HDDs for spares.  They will securely wipe them in front of you before they strip down for parts.

Not as exciting as the hammer/other methods but maybe a bit more useful.

unforeseen

[Deleted User] said:

unforeseen said:

Format the discs and throw them in the normal rubbish.

The chances of anybody digging them out of a landfill and forensically restoring the data is infintesimally small. 

Probably the worst advice, no need for hard disks to go in landfill, there are plenty of materials that can be usefully recycled from a hard disk - many companies will 100% recycle hard disks without anything going to landfill at all.

Here's a local firm we use for our business:

https://www.conceptmanagement.co.uk/services/data-security/hard-drive-recycling

Zero landfill policy.

Not the worst just the simplest. 

MACKEM99

pogofish said:

Open them up and pee on the discs themselves - the chemical action/corrosion with the disc coating and the urine will render it completely unreadable in no-time at all! 

Wife just tried that but her aim is not so good.

snae

Honestly, thermite or an atom bomb.

If it has super sensitive data on it and certain three (or four) letter agencies want their mitts on it, they will recover what they can. Drilling holes, shooting or a pound of RDX won't shift it.

It they don't hold anything sensitive, and you remove the data and wipe them correctly, then you could just give them away on FreeCycle, Gumtree or ebay. You'll be surprised what crap people will be happy to take away for free!