I was doing a little spring cleaning and decided to get rid of a couple of old computers that were retired years ago and stuck on a shelf in my basement.
I was thinking of just reformatting the hard drives and putting them on my curb for passers-by to snag, and then I read “How should I erase my hard drive before I give it away?” by Leo Notenboom on his Ask Leo! site.
According to Leo, “But to really, positively, and permanently destroy your data you need to physically destroy the disk.”
So that’s what I set out to do.
I rounded up a couple of my kids and my dog and we stomped, chucked, smashed, covered with wood chips, and submerged the hard drives in water.
I figured if I couldn’t wipe the hard drives clean for sure, I’d better torture them before putting them out to pasture.
In case somebody stumbles on the two I just worked over, they were packaged with a dirty diaper before going in the trash, so I think I am safe.
Anyhow, just something to consider if you are tossing out or donating a computer. Be sure to reformat the hard drive at a minimum.