What's the best/safest way to get rid of old Hard Drives?
I've been keeping HDD's from old machines since my first PC, and now have a small pile of them. I've been re-using 2.5" drives from laptops on Raspberry Pi's with a SATA-USB adaptor, but thats not viable with 3.5" drives, the power-draw is too high, and frankly these are just e-waste (in total there is just under 1Tb of storage here, including my first ever 80Gb Hdd, which I was assured would be "more than I'd ever need"...which is a lie as I have just over 7Tb of data stashed on the media centre, and another Tb or 2 on a project drive). I really don't want to carry them (or the rather clunky adaptor) all upto Harrogate.
Most stuff I read online says to smash the platters, or drill them. I don't think there is anything particularly sensitive on them (2 of them won't spin up with the adaptor I have, the other 3 have media which has been copied off to the Pi's)...should I be whaling on these with a spike and hammer, or is there a more civilised way of rendering them un-recoverable? In a surprise to no-one I don't have an industrial-strength magnet to degauss them.
Comments
I've taken them apart for the platters and then drilled and sanded. Once you get the platters out, you don't need a strong magnet - the little ones you use for 40k will do the trick!