Check out some similar questions!

paskew · Jul 16, 2011, 08:29 AM

I am actually giving away an old desk top and am taking the hard drive out. Is this all that needs to be done to remove my info.

ma0641 · Jul 16, 2011, 08:46 AM

Take it out, save it or hammer it to pieces or burn it. Nothing personal is stored in RAM.

odinn7 · Jul 16, 2011, 08:05 PM

Whenever I junk an old computer, I remove the HD and throw it in a nice hot fire. That will definitely make it impossible to get information from it. I do like the hammer idea too.

darkvision · Sep 28, 2011, 08:48 AM

Yes if you take the hard drive out there is no way to recover data. However if they need the hard drive and you want to be sure they can't access any old data here is what you do. Get BCwipe, it's a program that can be used for free too wipe your hard drive to DoD specifications for TS/SCI data(in other words no way ever in the universe can data be recovered) but the hard drive is still usable.

Top 2 posters, neither of those methods will guarantee all removal of data there are still existing methods to recover some/all data :P. if your going for physical destruction of a device(and are utterly paranoid) you would have to do something such as
A. use an oxy/acetylene torch to completely slag the disks of the hard drive into one molten lump.
B. grind the disks down to a very very fine dust(more trouble than its worth)
C. coat the disks in thermite and light it off.(rather dangerous)
D. lava from Mt. DOOM!(if your frodo)

The reason for that is that their have been cases of say using a hammer to break the disks where they have been put back together and had the data that is stored read off(as the magnetic state of the data is still their despite being hammered) yes your average person couldn't get to the data using those methods but the data is still their. Also why destroy a perfectly good hard drive when you can just bcwipe(or equivalent) and still have a useable drive at the end of it.