I think I’d drop it in a steel barrel, pour in a gallon of gasoline, and toss in a match.
In the winter, I’ve used the wood stove.
This leaves a lump the size of a cashew. Too hot to do that now (and, of course, I have nothing to hide).
I work in healthcare, and this is a topic of discussion for us. We end up contracting to have them run through an industrial shredder, which, like nuking from space, is the only way to be sure!
We also do have a way to securely wipe them, but...it takes a long time and we only use it in very specific cases. For example, if we are selling expensive imaging hardware to another hospital, it can be very complicated because they also purchased the software that runs the scanner, so we can’t just completely wipe the disk, otherwise, they get an expensive piece of equipment that cannot run.
I have heard, though never tried it, that putting it in a microwave oven will destroy the data, though that may be urban legend.
“His lab, which does extensive work for law enforcement and Fortune 500 corporations, has also recovered data from disks that were in fires and that had been submerged in water.”
Hold muh beer while I do some recycling:
Take the drives apart. Melt all of the parts with an Oxy-Acetylene torch. Nothing left but a puddle. Done.
The best hard drive eraser is merely metal sand paper and sand off the mirror finish on the drive plates. Takes a few minutes but 100% effective.