Hard Disks Never Die – They go to Digital Forensics

I’m attending an absolutely fascinating course on Digital Forensics provided by SANS. One of the things we will be doing is collecting data from hard drives for various practice exercises.
Imagine my amusement when the handout and appendixes recommend where to get used hard drives to practice on: eBay or Craigslist. Didn’t Simson Garfinkel do this a few years ago? And come up with a whole bunch of juicy information?
How do you dispose of hard drives? There are overwriting programs and businesses that will pick them up and dispose of them securely, providing a certificate (and thus transferring your risk). But how do you know they are performing as agreed?
I’m looking forward to my eBay hard drives and what they will disclose. Hope they’re not yours!
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