Discarded Hard Drive

I have a 60 GB IBM hard drive that crashed because of a fancy side bar program that I downloaded & installed. I'm not concerned about needing anything from it because I am doing weekly backups with Norton Ghost. I've installed a new Western Digital 120 GB hard drive that is running great. I'm currently using an IBM 30 GB hd for backups & considered salvaging the IBM 60 GB for a backup drive. I removed all of the NTFS partitions, set all of the 60 GB for one partition & formatted it as FAT 32. All was well with Ghost untill the 5th backup job which locked up. After 2 1/2 years of service from the IBM 60 GB hd I'm content to just trash it. Would physically opening the hard drive & breaking the platters render the data unreadable?

 

I believe so..

 

I'm not an expert on this, but in my opinion somebody would have to be determined and knowledgable and spend quite a bit of money to recover data from a drive after it has been opened and smashed. I don't see most identity thieves going to that much trouble. Of course your security concerns may be different from mine.

 

Hey...if your gonna ruin the drive platters can u send me the electronics? I have a 20GB IBM with a bad connector and I need to replace the electronics part, the drive itself works OK. I think most are universal, but it is worth a try anyways....let me know. PM me.