Roger Eichhorn writes: There are incredibly powerful magnets inside the hard drives. Just take one apart, but be careful not to get your skin caught between two of them -- they're nearly impossible to pry apart! You'll have a memorable blood blister! hahaha, I had a few milspec 2Tb Fujitsu SCSI's that weoighed around 8kg each - complete with full disk specs on sectors in a binder attached to each drive, I picked them up in 2000 for nothing at an auction even though the '98 price for a reconditioned one was over $5000 they have MASSIVE NIB magnets in them. I keep them either side of 4 inches of wood and even then they're hard to pry off - and something I treat with a monumental amount of respect. it's kind of amazing to grop a copper bar between the ones that are still mounted and watch it slow down as it falls, as though it's passing through syrup. but as to hard drive toasting, heat will do a fine job of messing up the polarity of the 1's and 0's. If total destruction of the drive is the final goal then bashing the bejesus out of them with a sledgehammer is not only going to magle the platters and scratch them beyond readability, but it'll also heat them sufficiently that all data will be well gone me - all my old hard drives go into my home smelter and I end up with aluminium ingots at the end for other projects :) k
