I’ve had this stack of old hard drives lying around for a few years as drives become unreliable or I upgrade. There’s a 160GB, 320GB, two 400GB and a 1TB that failed recently. Most of them have never been even in my personal systems, just in servers, but a handful were my daily-use desktops over the years and have old business records, bank statements and the like on them. Secure wipes take a long time, and there’s no point really with them destined for the trash anyway.
Fortunately, that new drill press of mine can make short work of them.
Now, off to the trash. That’s probably the most fun I’ve had using the drill press yet, too.
RETROVOLTAGE 
Great.
Very informative post for me.
You know what I do with them? I open them up Take out the magnets and use the platters as part of windchines.
nosaj
Kids love opening them, the discs can make wind chimes. And magnets super useful.
Good idea! I, too, have 6 or 7 old hard drives laying around believing I had to take the time to wipe the data. Bought a Jet drill press a couple years ago and now know what to do with it 🙂 Thanks!