The best way to erase a hard drive: destroy it

Reformatting a hard drive is next to useless when it comes to erasing the data stored on it. And even files that have previously been deleted can still be recovered if someone knows what they are doing.

While there are a number of applications that claim to effectively and completely “clean” a hard drive, the sage advice I adhere to is to take a hammer (preferably a sledgehammer) to the disused drive and smash it into as many pieces as possible.

You could also try burning or microwaving an old hard drive, though I think the sledgehammer is probably the most convenient (and safest) method of hard drive destruction.

“The damage inflicted by the ZDNet hammer proved too much for the fragile platters in this case. Most of the time, dropping a laptop or external hard drive off a desk will mean data recovery is still possible. Our engineers are able to bypass that kind of damage. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and contrary to what TV shows like CSI will tell you, piecing together a shattered platter in order to recover critical data is not possible.”