Wiping data from a hard drive.

[Basil Chupin]

A few days ago I 'lost an HD which is 11 months old - and it still has 4 
years of warranty remaining.

However, the HD contains personal information which means that I will 
simply put the sledge hammer to it - unless I can wipe the HD clean 
before I take it back for replacement.

Since the HD doesn't spin-up, I cannot use the normal data destroying 
programs to wipe the data.

When we were still using 3 1/4 and 5 1/2 inch floppies I had a powerful 
magnet thingie which would wipe a floppy clean (but I don't have that 
'thingie' anymore, in anycase it would probably be too weak for a 500GB HD).

I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on how I can wipe the data off 
the HD?

Would taking it to a wrecker's yard and putting it under the magnet they 
use to lift car bodies do the trick, for example?

Thanks for any advice.

BC

-- 
Gumperson's Law: The probability of anything happening is in
inverse proportion to its desirability.