[equaviator]

“Heat doesn’t kill hard drives.”

If I bake my old Seagate and Samsung hard drives in the oven at 500+ degrees for four hours, will that make them safe enough for the landfill or would I still want to take a ball-peen hammer to them?

[oh8eleven]

would I still want to take a ball-peen hammer to them
Yes. Remove the drives from the PCs and then remove the drive covers. That'll expose the disks (platters).
I've had some shatter like glass, and others would just bend, like sheet metal.

[Bob434]

[[If I bake my old Seagate and Samsung hard drives in the oven at 500+ degrees for four hours, will that make them safe enough for the landfill or would I still want to take a ball-peen hammer to them?]]

If you have access to a drill with metal bit, drill 3-5 holes through hte disks- and then as extra precaution take a sledge hammer to it- but really- people aren’t going through landfills looking for hard-drives to steal info from usually- the risk is very very small- You coudl also disassemble the whole thing and scatter the 4 disks *(after smashing them up) to the 4 winds-

[rarestia]

will that make them safe enough for the landfill or would I still want to take a ball-peen hammer to them?

Drill through the case and destroy the platters or mix up some homemade thermite and melt it.

Never throw away a sealed HDD. If the platters are intact, something can be recovered.

[snarkpup]

If I bake my old Seagate and Samsung hard drives in the oven at 500+ degrees for four hours, will that make them safe enough for the landfill or would I still want to take a ball-peen hammer to them?

I use a drill press.