If, for some reason, you have a hard drive that you really, really, want to erase today is your lucky day. bbum has posted some tips for erasing a drive, and reminds you that even broken drives should be "erased."

The best way to really "erase" a drive is to take it apart and destroy it:

Me? I take dead drives apart. They have amazingly powerful magnets inside, along with all kinds of very useful screws, washers, nuts, coils, and other fiddly bits.

The platters, obviously, contain the data and they should be destroyed. I run one of the magnets over them upon removal and then keep a stack of the platters around as they have proven to be incredibly useful! The platters have been used for everything as clamp pads for gluing stuff to spacers to level a table or work surface to being used by my son as part of a bug house.

Erase that hard drive! [bbum's weblog-o-mat via Hackzine]