What to do with old HDDs

[Guest2]

What do you do with your old hard drives?

I have a 1TB Western digital black, a 3TB Western digital black and a 130GB Crucial M4 SSD that now have no data on them and are outside my computer (in a cupboard)

If I sold them I would risk old personal data be accessed - pictures, documents, passwords to sites etc.
Do people generally destroy them - fire / crushed at the tip or something?

Old cables and worthless bits I just throw out but HDDs may contain recoverable data

 

[Guest2]

I usually just keep mine, the small SSD could be popped into a caddy and you’ve got a nice portable drive that can be used to transfer files across to other devices (I’ve got a 64GB one that I’ve done exactly this with, although that was when 64GB flash memory wasn’t as cheap/available).

If you are at all worried and want to just simply destroy the hard drives and data, Take them apart and use a hammer on the platters Scrap man will take them after you are finished. Problem solved.

I thought the only real way to destroy drives & data is fire - a very very hot fire.
That or an an industrial shredder like a engine / gearbox shredder

edit - beaten to it