How do I destroy the data on a crashed hard drive?

Last Friday morning when I got to the office, I found that my computer had the infamous Microsoft Blue Screen of Death. I tried rebooting, but the SCSI card got no response from my boot drive. This wasn't a huge problem, because I had already intended to upgrade my system drive and already had my data partitions copied to the new drive. After a little work I was able to restore a recent enough backup of my system drive to my new system drive and get the computer runing again.

My problem now is how do I destroy the data that still exists on the hard drive platters so they can't be read and recovered by anyone else even someone with access to a clean room who could fix the drive well enough to read any data that still exists on them. I've considered using my bulk eraser to erase the data that still exists and then using an electric drill to put holes in the platters.

You’re right. Which begs the question, if enough palms were greased at one of these ‘data destruction’ companies, would it result in data NOT being destroyed but forwarded on to any interested parties?

The best way to destroy your system’s data is to do it yourself.

Just install the next Microsoft security patch. LOL

I've been thinking about this issue most of the day (yeah, I know "get a life Jessup!"), and I keep thinking that I heard something many years ago about some sort of assembly language program that could be run from a diskette (or now, a DVD or even a thumb drive), and the program would literally communicate with the hard drive, and force the heads to collide with (crash) the platter(s), thus rendering the drive useless.

I keep thinking it was a Seagate diagnostic which was pirated and corrupted into a destructive form, but I can't be sure. I found nothing on Google.

Anyone?

I've been thinking about this issue most of the day (yeah, I know "get a life Jessup!"), and I keep thinking that I heard something many years ago about some sort of assembly language program that could be run from a diskette (or now, a DVD or even a thumb drive), and the program would literally communicate with the hard drive, and force the heads to collide with (crash) the platter(s), thus rendering the drive useless.

That would only make the small proportion of the drive platters, under and adjacent to the drive heads when they crash, unreadable. The platters could be removed, cleaned up and placed back into a working drive to recover the data remaining on the rest of the drive. Also remember, the most recent data will have multiple copies on the drive due to deleted recent versions still being around.

Such a utility would be incredibly dangerous. Someone wanting to sabotage a business would only have to use a bootable floppy or USB drive to wreak havock. How many people or organizations disable booting from external devices or password protect the BIOS setup of their computers?

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