More on Hard Drive Destruction

Several people responded to my post about the couple whose "destroyed" hard drive ended up at a flea market, and several thoughtful writers have created follow-up stories with more information on how to wipe a drive electronically... and how to destroy it physically.

TechPedia's piece is one of the most thorough that I've seen. First, the writer covers his favorite drive-slaying application, Darik's Boot and Nuke, which I haven't used but looks plenty capable based on the specs and on TechPedia's review. (I have never been let down by KillDisk, though the full version costs $30.

TechPedia goes on to discuss, in depth, how to physically destroy a drive. While I have long advocated smashing a drive with a hammer until things rattle around inside, TechPedia is right to point out that this usually doesn't destroy the drive completely: The platters themselves will probably remain intact and a dedicated cretin could disassemble the drive, put the platters into a new mechanism, and recover any data on it. (TechPedia recommends either taking the drive apart and smashing the platters directly with a sledge hammer, or melting them with a blowtorch.)

Now that may be overkill depending on how important it is that no one sees those pictures of your cat, but it's still good advice. The bottom line is that you should indeed wipe the data from the drive using software before you try to physically destroy it. For common drives full of common data, the old smash-until-it-rattles approach is probably good enough.