Which reminds me of a nice news thread in the early nineties. The 
discussion started with a similar question but it turned
out the sender was someone from an 'agency' that needed a fast
way to wipe the data from the drives in seconds. Probably in case
their cover got blown. Grinding obviously takes too long. I remember
the solution that evolved was to fit bottles of acid to a hole in the
drive case. The bottle contents could be emptied with a push of a
button and destroy the drive. Up in smoke. Permanently. Not sure if
that still works with glass platters nowadays. :-)

J

Donald Tripp wrote:
> a.k.a. "black holed" ... never to be seen again :-)
> 
> On Feb 28, 2007, at 10:34 PM, John Hearns wrote:
> 
>> Michael Hannon wrote:
>>> Greetings.  I'd be interested to know how you "wipe" a hard drive 
>>> before disposing it.  I.e., I don't mean "how one wipes a hard drive" 
>>> in general.
>>
>> Secure sites send them to a plant to be ground up into little bits.