Gallery: How to destroy your hard drive

Disposing of computer hard drives in a secure and safe way has become a hot topic, especially after the high profile data leaks in the past year.

Whether it is ID thieves after personal information; or data leaks that could affect business or even national security, making sure data can't be retrieved from old hard drives is very much on the agenda.

So bearing this in mind, silicon.com picked some ways to deal with your unwanted hard drives.

This is the Verity Systems VS7000 manual hard drive destroyer which crushes the hard drive with the turn of a handle. The destroyer bends the hard drive platter so any data on it can never be read again.

Plus, check out these 10 hard drive disasters.

Photo credit: Verity