You could also literally wipe your data by using a little sandpaper on the platters if you really wanted to.
I'm a big fan of recycling old electronics wherever possible. Would the cost of compute to virtually destroy the data on the drive so it can be safely reused as storage exceed the cost of physically destroying the drive and then recycling the raw materials?
I know for some cases true destruction is the best way to mitigate data theft in this case but... That's a bit heavy handed for an 80% use case, innit?
Edit: personally I always check what's on my old drives before decomming them but I think I'm an outlier here
8 times rewrite.
One of these days though I'll get around to zeroing out a drive and then running Autopsy on it for shiggles just to see what comes back up. Should be a fun experience!
I recommend overwriting with an endless loop of the freeway scene from "Solaris".
I briefly worked IT for a federal police agency and that is what they did.
I don't think I'll do that though plus I don't have a metal bit sharp enough. I'd research how to sharpen a metal bit on a grinder. Get sidetracked and look up how to harden metal bits. Then metallurgy and different metal and what exactly is hardening how does it change the crystal structure. Is metal actually a crystal? and so on....
You don't need a special bit for this. Most of a hard drive is made of soft aluminum; a standard drill bit will go right through it.
Today you can buy a 20T drive for under $300. You can copy all your old drives to it, and then get rid of the old drives. As for stolen data, you can:
1. put it on a drill press and run a 3/8 drill through the platter
2. put your safety glasses on and give it a mighty blow from a sledgehammer
I suppose the NSA, at great expense and effort, might still be able to retrieve a few bytes from it, but even they aren't that desperate for your copy of Oregon Trail.
BTW, I'm a hoarder myself and understand the problem.