Hard drives really are hard!

by Paul
(London, England)

I had read that pcs were being broken up in places like nigeria and that there was a booming 2nd hand market in hard drives. It seems that people would buy the drives and then see what information they could recover from them about the former owner(s).

So I decided to destroy my hard disk before I put the pc into the recycling. Wow! How hard is it to damage one of those things? I hit it repeatedly with a hammer and didn't do much damage. Then I tried bending it with pliers which wasn't easy either.

In the end, I found a pair of tin-snips that were my father's and used them - with a diy bench - to cut the disk into pieces.

I'm glad that I did it, but it wasn't easy. If you want your pc to 'die' after it has 'died', it will take some work.

Editor's Comment: Thanks Paul for your comments. We have done something similar once. We were told to use acid - but that isn't exactly easy or safe and so we chose not to.

If you plan to dispose of a personal computer, we recommend that you take the matter seriously to protect your passwords, login info, bank details and more.