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Obsolete Hard Drive Disposal with Secure Data Destruction

How does everyone else dispose of their obsolete Hard Drives? 

We have accumulated quite a number of old hard drives, all less that 20 GB, that may have various pieces of sensitive student information scattered on them and we need to dispose of them in a secure manner.

We received a bid from a local company that will grind them and recycle the metal, and is giving us a discounted price of $5 per drive (they say they charge businesses $10 per drive).

Is that a good price?  Or are there better and cheaper (but secure) ways to dispose of hard drives?

Thanks.


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Yep, find someone who likes to run a drill, and slam drill bit holes in the platters. That is how the State of MN used to dispose of drives, and that's how I do it. Anyone else have ideas??
Thanks Corey.

Well, we've been thinking of either a drill press or the sledgehammer in the parking lot as the do it yourself option. But when you are done, you still have to haul it off to the recycling center, and may have to pay for the final disposal. We were thinking it would still cost a buck or two per drive for the recycling, as the old ones are heavy.

So for commercial disposal, is $5 a reasonable price?

And for do it yourself, how do you dispose of the remains of the detroyed drive, and how much does that cost?

Thanks.

Thanks.
I do add the drives to my Asset Recovery pile when they come to get our tech junk, Marty. I take the time to drill a hole in order to ensure the drives are not usable anymore...call me picky...
I don't know if Apple will be doing this again but for the last couple years Apple was taking stuff for free. If it's just hard drives you could bring them to me and put them on my pile of junk. But that's just if Apple is still doing it this year. We'll have to see. For hard drives I wouldn't pay anything to get rid of them. But I would take the drill to them first.
Matt's correct - with Apple doing the recycling thing again this summer (see Matt's other forum post) they do take hard drives and grind them to confetti.

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