This may be an odd question considering that it's pretty much the
opposite of what most of us normally do, but I was wondering if anyone
had any tips on how to destroy a CD-R. Say, for example, you had a CD
(data or audio) with sensitive material on it that you didn't want to
just throw in the trash and hope that no one ever found it and played
it. Yes, I know that ending up in a landfill wouldn't do it any good,
but that wouldn't necessarily make it unplayable. I'm reminded of a
huge lot of cassettes that my brother and I found in a dump around
1980 that we took home to record over, and we found that they were
recordings of some kind of courtroom cases, probably stuff we never
should have heard. We were too young to be interested in them and
just recorded over them (I still have some of those same tapes, and
yes, they still play), but still, whoever just chucked them in the
trash was being rather sloppy, I'd think.
So anyway, back to the CD problem. Last night I tried to break one in
half, thinking that since it was plastic, it would snap in two if bent
hard enough, but no. The thing was nearly impossible to break. I
tried using a cabinet door for leverage, but that still didn't bend it
enough to break. I did manage to warp the surface and the inner gold
layer enough that its data probably wouldn't be recoverable, but the
more trouble it gave me, the more I began to wonder if any of you guys
out there had a specific procedure in place for getting rid of CDs
other than just chucking them. I also tried cutting it in half with
some needle-nose pliers and taking a lighter to the writeable surface,
and while this did some damage, it still wasn't what I'd consider the
data equivalent of using a paper shredder. Certainly not efficient or
easy, either.
Any thoughts? And no, before anyone thinks I have a CD full of super
secret scary government files or something, don't worry. It was just
a back-up of personal correspondence and journal entries that I didn't
need anymore (I made a more updated back-up). I know this isn't
specifically a recorded sound-related question, but it could be, you
know, if one were to have a recording on CD-R like the ones I
described above.