What do you do with old hard drives?

[Rupert]

Had a clear out this morning. 

6 old PC's mostly with bit missing, or broken. 

9 hard drives, 6 of them 80GB.

loads of 1gb memory.

I feel I need to make some effort to destroy the drives.  I know credit card details cost £10 each, the the value of my data is limited.. also I dont really know what is on them, if there is anything of value. 

for example I used roboform, have lastpass now, does that leave encrypted data that might be hacked one day? (retorical, they are being destroyed.) 

The old hammer/drill/ nail routine seems heavy handed.

Sue suggested I soaked them in salt water, drill them and then bury them in the garden.  Damp seems to destroy most electrical stuff.   

What do you do?

[Woz]

Sledge Hammer then recycle bin.

[Mackin USA]

HAMMER

or

http://www.mypctechs.com/techclub/destroy-a-hard-drive-the-cheap-and-easy-method/

[rcjordan]

Pickax

[BoL]

Hammered my last one, soaked it in water too. a bit rust won't do any harm.

[littleman]

I just seem to store them indefinitely.

[ukgimp]

Charity? Seems such a waste.

[Rupert]

It does seem a waste.. I have kepr the 2 x 160GBG sand the 250 GB.  not sure why.

There are precious metals in there too.  And there is no second hand value.  there are higher prices for the "Buy it now"  but no evidence they sell:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hitachi-Deskstar-HDS728080PLA380-80GB-Internal-7200RPM-SATA-3-5-Hard-Drive-HDD-/161832679502?hash=item25adfab84e

Went for £1.70 plus £2 postage.

So not sure charity would thank me. If they are already formatted, it might add to the value, but I started, and they were crashing in the caddy doing it on USB.

Even taking them apart requires me to buy more tools.

I was thinking of setting up a storage unit. It ought to be simple, but the caddys are not cheap. They should be.

Anyone know a good electrician, who could design a cheap caddy bank, load the right software to raid say 10 or 20 drives, to give maybe 1TB of decent, relatively safe storage for under £50? 

[JasonD]

The best paperweights money can buy.

[ergophobe]

If you can get them in a running machine, you can wipe them - there's a standard. It used to be seven complete writes, but it might be higher now. There is software that does it.

Fire would be effective.

Putting them in an MRI machine would do well if it didn't destroy the MRI machine

>>charity

The only thing with less value than Rupert's data are his hard drives wiped of data ;-)

[Rupert]

Hey, dont you know, I know stuff thats secret...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGomFcV4E6E

Its not that I am paranoid...

[JasonD]

Honestly, I use old HD's as paperweights and doorstops. They're great at that.

I also don't bother wiping them, as too much hassle and normally I care so little for the data on them that I can't be bothered to wipe them / smash them securely. I just don't think my data is that interesting, especially if lying around my house.

[Rumbas]

I just punish them with a hammer and destroy everything and then straight into the bin. (Sorry tree huggers..)

[Rooftop]

I was thinking of turning a stack of them into a table top in the office.  Open them up to expose the actual drive.  Glue them onto the top then put a sheet of glass over.  I thought it could look quite cool, but never did anything about it.

[JasonD]

I love that idea RT and agree it'd look very cool.