OK, so I have 4 HDs that need to be destroyed. (Unfortunately, I don't 
have a SCSI controller capable of operating them, so I can't erase them 
that way.)

In the past, what I've done is drill through the platters with a power 
tool. (Yes, stupid I know, but the Director of IT thinks this is... a 
perfectly acceptable way to destroy the data.) Fortunately, with the IDE 
drives found in desktops, the drill cuts through them like a hot knife 
through butter. Unfortunately, these SCSI server-class drives appear to 
be made of Kryptonite or something, because the drill simply dances 
around the place, barely scratching the metal.

Oh dear.

Well, maybe if I take the lid off... ah. Star-drive screws, just 
*slightly* smaller than the smallest screwdriver we possess. Damn.

Enter stage right: My dad. If you want to destroy something, he's your man.

He grabs a pair of fat, chunky screwdrivers, and manages to wedge one 
between the lid and the body, and proceeds to lever the lid off. Screws 
pop out and fly across the room at supersonic velocities. These drives 
are made of some serious metal, but somehow my dad bends the lid until 
it looks like a crumpled sheet of cardboard. He tries to bash in the 
platters, but they're really sturdy. So I drill through them instead.

Well, that was the Maxtor drive. The other three are IBM. He picks up 
the first one and tries to lever off the lid. As he's levering it up, I 
hear a loud crack. Turning the drive over, there's a melodious jingling 
sound. We shake the drive a little, and shards of silvered glass tumble 
out. We shake it some more, and dragually big chunks of platter tumble 
out. When we finally get the lid off, the platters have *shattered* 
clean through. (Obviously my dad was levering against the platters 
themselves.)

We proceed to destroy the other two drives in the same way. Damn, I'm 
glad we both had glasses on! When those things snap, they blast glass 
dust and glass shards everywhere with considerable violence. The final 
disk, my dad snapped it, and we turned it over the bin. What came out 
was more or less sand. I guess you had to be there... it was really 
quite funny. Well, *we* both laughed our arses off! ;-)

Mmm, shattered glass. This might take a while to clear up...

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