[njain68]

no PC can read it?

[Rhythm]

ThermiteKey word was completely.

[Benjamin D]

Lol thermite. Um...you can slap a huge magnet on it for a couple of days or submerge it in saltwater overnight. There is some software that claims to be able to do the job as well like window washer and drive wipe.These guys are right though, just beat the crap out of it. It's best to do it after a rough day at work.

[The Say What! Guy]

feed it to your dog

[Scuba Dude!]

BEST thing to do is remove it from the computer, take the housing off and then drill holls through the disk. I read this once on a CNET.Com article. Its the ONLY failsafe way.

[aaaplayya]

The linc below will answer you question....basically you need to reformat it.

www.microsoft.com

[Nazdravan]

A strong magnet should do the job nicely.Hard discs,like tapes,floppy disks and credit cards store information on a magnetic medium.If the magnet is brought in contact or close enough to it, it modifies the magnetic field,to a point where the data becoms distorted/damaged/destroyed.I reccomend a woofer magnet,but anyy magnet with enough power should do it.Just run it over the hard disc 10-20 times and leave it stuck to it for about 5 minutes.

en.wikipedia.org

[Griff]

Send it to Mythbusters and ask them. It'll be blown to bits.

[technical_13]

Sledge hammer, Axe, fall from 30 story building, Any number of ways. Be creative!!!! If your asking for a non-violent way, I suppose you could use a program like....http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htmKilldisk - DOS disk eraserhttp://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.phpEraser - DOS, Win9x, WinME, Win2k, WinXP, WinNT 4.0 disk eraser

[Rick G]

if you want to reuse it ...obviously the answers so far dont help, but if you want beyand a doubt all info gone, and still reuse it, look at a product called evidence eliminater, it meets military code for data erasure. essentially it writes blank information over every part of the disk multiple times. very very slow, but effective. although at 100 bucks you could buy a new drive.

http://privacy-software-review.t

[Wolfeymole]

Originally Posted by Scuba Dude! BEST thing to do is remove it from the computer, take the housing off and then drill holls through the disk. I read this once on a CNET.Com article. Its the ONLY failsafe way.

The above statement is the only way to go to eliminate any possibility of data recovery.

[Maria]

Use a hammer !

[Maria]

Originally Posted by Wolfeymole The above statement is the only way to go to eliminate any possibility of data recovery.

There are lots of ways to completely destroy a HDD ( grind the platers with a angle grinder, sulfuric acid to name two, just takes a bit of imagination :D)

[alex]

Considering the actuator in a hdd consists of a coil and a magnet using a magnet to erase data simply won't work. You could put the biggest magnet you could find on/next to the hdd and it wouldn't do a thing.

The platters in Hdd's are made from a glass or ceramic substrate with a magnetic coating.

If you didn't want to get into the hdd and remove the platters then the drill is best option.

If you did want to get in to the hdd and remove the platters then (a very hot) fire (considering the material properties) is a good proposition

Me? I like the sledgehammer approach. Love destroying stuff.:D

[Tom Tiger]

Do a google for the ultimate boot cd, it has several harddrive wiping tools on it, it works very well. After which format and put an OS on it... chances that anyone can retrieves something are virtually impossible.

And if you really want to destroy it, open up the harddisk tank and destroy the platters. At work we sometimes have to destroy drives and we drive a metal pin straight through the casing and the platters, electronics are removed and destroyed.