Listen to the audio on NPR’s website.

The most common questions I get on this subject relates to getting rid of the data yourself. It’s pretty easy to run a software program to secure-erase a hard drive, but only if the drive is in “good health”. In other words, if it’s not reading and writing properly, you’re nifty drive-erasing program won’t be useful at all, since it has to write to the drive in order to permanently erase the data.

Formatting a hard drive, contrary to popular belief, does not truly “erase” the files on it. Formatting simply dismantles the file system, which a file recovery program can reconstruct with a fairly high rate of success, making your files readable again to a potential snoop. So make sure that if your drive is working properly, you take steps to “secure-erase” the drive.

If your hard drive won’t boot-up, makes clicking sounds, or just acts weird, it doesn’t mean your data can’t be found or recovered after you’ve thrown it out. In most cases, a non-functioning drive can be accessed professional data recovery centers.

If you’re very concerned about the data on a non-functioning drive, the best option would be to find a recycling center that offers data destruction. Two common methods include magnetic erasure and drive shredding.

Can’t find someone to destroy the data for you? Well there’s always the drill bit option. Just pick a good size drill bit made for cutting through metal, and go to town on the drive. Drilling into the top of the drive multiple times is sufficient enough to crack the platters, destroy entire sections of the drive and lessen the chances of unauthorized recovery to very low percentages. Although data could still potentially be recovered from a drill-bit destroyed drive, the cost would be so high that you’d have to be storing information from the department of defense or something for anyone to want to attempt it.

So the bottom line is, when you’re ready to junk your old machine, either pull out the hard drive and keep it locked in a drawer for safe keeping, run secure erase software on it, drill it into oblivion, or find a trustworthy recycling center to destroy it for you. In any scenario, you will have a bit more room in your closet and one less thing to keep you awake at night.