While the vast majority of the computer users out there are obsessed with keeping their hard-disk drives in the best possible shape, some other users would like to shut down their drives for good. There are multiple reasons why you would like your hard-disk data trashed and both companies and enterprises rely on such machines just as home users do with paper shredders.

Suppose your company buys a new lot of IT gear and wants to dispose of the old computers. Usually, the old IT gear ends up donated to charity in order to give schools or poor children access to technology. However, even the deepest format operation can't completely erase data on the disk, which means that everyone using a specialized software recovery application could bring data back from the dead.

On the other hand, industrial espionage mostly relies on the improper disposal of data to gain access to the secret side of the competition. The only way to get rid of the data is physically damaging the hard-disk drive beyond all recognition.

EDR's Hard Disk Crusher can completely squash an HDD unit in less than 10 seconds. We won't say that data would be "smoothly" deleted since the HDD crusher would drill a hole through the drive's spindles. The process also creates some ripples along the HDD platters to complete the damage and make the stored data unrecoverable.

According to EDR, a study conducted by the MIT researchers unveiled the fact that obsolete hard-drives still hold the stored information long after they have been wiped out using software. The researchers were able to get about 5,000 credit card numbers from 158 used disks randomly selected.

The EDR Crusher is able to deal with data the hard way and the result is a completely useless drive, ready to be discarded. However, since everything comes with a price, you'll have to pay about $11,500 for the machine, which makes it suitable for businesses dealing with data destruction, but not for small offices.