1. I'd say you drop it a story onto concrete, start the thing up, and let it vibrate itself to death.

Posted at 2:59PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Matt

2. put some tnt in the hdd and the ignite it.

Posted at 3:16PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Tuisk

3. Give it to a 3 year old with a 30 foot extension cord so it will be running while they bash it into every piece of furniture in your house.

Posted at 3:22PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Matt

4. Why not put a little C4 in there? Some plastic explosive will do the job nicely. Maybe that acid burns off the raised portions of the disc so it reads as blank... That would be nice instead of destroying the drive, albeit extremely hard to pull off.

Posted at 3:28PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Dean

5. put in a solenoid injected syringe of mercury. Should dissolve the surface of the platter and leave a nasty surprise for whoever you were trying to hide your data from, when they open it. Would say a glass vial which gets crushed by the solenoid for old school school style, but theres too much potential for loss if the drive ever gets dropped.

Posted at 3:29PM on Dec 25th 2007 by John

6. My dad has this hard drive all shot up. Maybe I will take a picture and send it to you? Very effective!

Posted at 3:30PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Weirdguy

7. The easiest/cheapest way I can think of is vibrating the hard drive with strong vibrations over some amount of time. I'm not sure how long it takes to erase the whole thing. Someone find out.

Posted at 3:38PM on Dec 25th 2007 by TheClockSmith

8. a ride in the washing machine with a brick for company

Posted at 3:44PM on Dec 25th 2007 by cheesewheel

9. I think you should just connect a larger battery to the hdd and if a special switch is pressed it offloads into the hdd and fries it.

Posted at 3:47PM on Dec 25th 2007 by munger

10. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=280184520379&Category=22691&_trksid=p3907.m29
http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_-1_10001_35461_400003002_400000000_400003000_400-3-2
http://www.a2zhobbies.com/Estes/Rocket_Accessories/EST-2301.html
http://cgi.ebay.com/8-Channel-Remote-Control-System-Home-Vehicle-Lock-NEW_W0QQitemZ300183027166QQihZ020QQcategoryZ78864QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Optional but useful if you want to put this somewhere outside your home:
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=124&name=NAS-Storage
Get a 2 drive unit so this stuff will fit in it and you can use the power from the second drive to ignite the whole thing.

Posted at 3:50PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Ferm

11. Something that sets a large amount of strong epoxy (or molten lead) onto the platters when something is tripped seems a good idea. Or resin, or metal shavings, or maybe house current across the platters, or a strong acid that dissolves the ferromagnetic coating on the platters, or dropping a MIG welding tip onto the spinning drive while active, or...

Posted at 4:01PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Jesse

12. Epoxy wouldn't do much good. It'd stop you running the HDD, but wouldn't destroy the data. A forensic examiner could simply remove the platters and insert them into an identical drive and read the data off (barring iny drive-specific encryption, in which case some ship re-soldering would be required. In any case, the data is still in a readable state).

Posted at 4:03PM on Dec 25th 2007 by EdZ

13. oxy-acteylene cutting torch. done.

Posted at 4:44PM on Dec 25th 2007 by happy gilmore

14. sell it to the government and say it contains details of "what really happend"

Posted at 4:46PM on Dec 25th 2007 by thip

15. The only sure way. Only problem is that is stinks really bad.

http://web.mac.com/barrywoods/Site/DOD_drive_wipe.html

Posted at 5:04PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Barry

16. I'm thinking scrappy was probably right about piercing method, ie, if you can just punch a whole through the platters, the recovery would become too costly for all but the most valuable data. This could be done easily by sharpening the point of a small piston, fixing it to the top of the drive, and filling it with some gun powder.

Of course, the same idea could be implemented with thermite, since dab about the size of a penny would probably be enough to melt through the aluminum top and burn a hole through the platters. But not enough to burn through the rest of the drive and case.

Once nice thing about thermite is its cheap and commonly available.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Thermite-100-grams-Fe2O3_W0QQitemZ230206230007QQihZ013QQcategoryZ1267QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

You could light it either with a magnesium powder starter, or by mixing it with potasium permanganate (definitely misspelled) then adding glycerin, which will react with the potassium permanganate and spontaneously combust at high temperature, setting off the thermite.

If I have some time once my college apps are done, I may put together a video testing this out.

Also, about frying the drive with a battery, all that would be fried is the controller hardware, so the data could be recovered by replacing the controller or moving the platters to a new drive.

Posted at 5:10PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Wolf

17. A while back I read that taking a nice electric drill with a large bit (quarter inch or larger), then just drill a few holes right through.

Otherwise, my dad has a really old "nail gun" that actually works like a gun. It has a gun powder-filled shell, but instead of a bullet, it fires a nail. The device is designed for nailing things into concrete, but I'm thinking it'd blast some nice holes right through the drive. Plus, it's fun!

Posted at 5:20PM on Dec 25th 2007 by k1ngfunk

18. Only thing that will work is heating it up to the Cürie point (when the metal looses its magnetic abilities)

so fire up that oven

Posted at 5:20PM on Dec 25th 2007 by Simon

19. Where I work my department used to manage the local landfill. We had the 50 ton compactor drive over them.

Posted at 5:46PM on Dec 25th 2007 by pt

20. Put some sand inside and let the drive spin. It will not be long until all magnetic material on working surfaces is dust. Good luck recovering data from *that*.

Posted at 6:00PM on Dec 25th 2007 by xyzzy