On Sunday, October 26, 2014 1:12:53 AM UTC-10, sf wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Oct 2014 20:41:09 -1000, dsi1
> > wrote:
>
> > I have a crosscut shredder but is that good enough? Maybe not. I don't
> > throw away hard drives and there's a drawerful of them in the office
> > even though I've taken quite a few apart. Beats the hell out of me where
> > they're coming from. They multiply like rabbits. :-)
>
> Maybe I didn't hear it here... but I heard somewhere that you can
> erase hard drives very effectively by passing a big enough magnet over
> them. At the moment, I'm thinking the person was talking about using
> a magnet from an old stereo speaker.
>

You might be able to wipe out most of the data from a drive that way but you can't be sure that it's 100%. That's pretty much why I disassemble the drives. As an added bonus, you can harvest some nice rare earth magnets.

>
> --
> Avoid cutting yourself when slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold them.