How to destroy floppy disks

A floppy

Need to destroy some old floppy backups for security purposes or just want to destroy your old floppies for fun? Well here's the fastest, easiest way to do it

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• scissors or a knife

1. If you just want to make some floppies unreadable by the average person for security reasons, then follow this first method. Stack 2-3 floppies together so that they're all facing the same direction.

2. Now pull all the metal clips together so they retract and expose the magnetic disks.

3. Now take your scissors or very sharp knife and stab it through all three. Add a little cutting motion and/or twist to do as much damage as possible so that the disk won't be able to spin inside the casing. That will make them totally unreadable in a standard floppy drive.

4. While the average person won't be able to put the disk into a drive and read it, there is expensive equipment that can read the undamaged parts of the extracted magnetic disk. So to completely destroy it, you'll probably need to hire a data destruction service. Even if you cut the magnetic disk into a hundred pieces, each piece can still be read and contain personal customer information or something. Professionals are usually inexpensive and can make the entire disk completely unreadable with powerful electromagnets or super-shredders.

Tips & Warnings

• Be very careful not to stab yourself since your hand will be really close to the area you're cutting through. You may want to get a braided kevlar glove if you need to destroy a lot of floppies.