About shredders...

Do you mean a shredder that shreds actual Credit Cards being able to handle the Platters of a HDD or the entire HDD?

Ideally they shouldn't have enough cutting power to shred the Aluminum Platters of a Modern HDD but here it all depends on the actual shredder.

The ones that cut strips are more likely to be able to shred a Platter than the ones that make Confetti but even then you need to look at the number of pages that it can shred at a single time.

Those capable of shredding 15 or more pages t a time should be OK with Platters but the smaller ones most likely will not do the job required.

Col ;)

That's exactly what I meant. :D

[i]I'm not going to select it as the answer yet, because Davette is threatening me.[/i]

Is the [b]Davette[/b] trying to adversely affect my programing yet again. :p

I know that is what females do but I find it just so annoying so I'll open that door now. ;)

Col

Credit cards are plastic. Hard drives are metal. Most office shredders cannot handle a hard drive.

If you meant to say "CD-ROM" or "DVD", that's a different matter. My office shredder has a slot that indicates it will accept both credit cards and optical media. I have shredded many of them.

In a word, NO.

While you can buy metal shredders that could shred a hard drive, the blades are too thick and course to effectively shred paper. Not only does a metal shredder require a lot of power, the blades need to be thick enough to shear metal without breaking themselves.

Even if you tear a hard drive down and remove the metal platter, I don't think your average office grade shredder would be able to cut up a platter. Even if it could, the stress would be so much as to significantly reduce the life of the shredder.

In an old thread on hard drive disposal, the best solution that was presented was to use thermite grenades. The second best was as a target on a shooting range.

Chas