Smashing up your PC

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Recently on the UK news, there have been features about disposing of PCs safely in terms of preventing fraud. Obviously, as just deleting files frm a PC does not TRULY delete them, naughty people have recovered old PCs from skips and got to the data. So the recommendation is literally to take a hammer to your hard drive if you wish to dispose of a PC!

Fun fun fun!!!!

However, what would you say are more - shall we say - civilised methods of ensuring data on a hard drive is truly gone? I've heard a strong magnet would do the trick, someone once also suggested sticking the hard drive in a microwave, but I thought that would be mental, wouldn't it?

 

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.. or use this or this

 

Ah, let me backtrack a little there UKD, so keen I was to write my ramblings.

Of course, software for the job is the best bet. Easiest and cleanest. It just struck me as odd though, consider that your average home PC user is not actually terribly IT literate, yet the guidelines are to open up the PC, identify the hard drive, remove it and phyiscally destroy it (probably in the process blowing themselbves up as they don;t realise you need to unplug it first). On the BBC news website, their helpful guidelines include something like 'the hard drive is normally found under the CD drive'. That'll mean nothing to a lot of people

 

My usual tactic is to dismantle the hard drive and use the platters as coasters

As far as the average home user is concerned, my rates are very reasonable and I know what a hard drive looks like

 

Yes indeed ! The thought of the average user opening the PC case instills me with abject fear !

Might have been better if they recommended taking it to a local computer shop that can do data destruction and give some sort of certificate confirming it.