Posted by Kromey at 9:10pm Apr 9 '13...if you know the limitations. It will indeed stop a criminal from reading data from the hard drive, just the same as a single-pass overwrite, but with the advantage of doing so a lot faster! Then again, smashing the circuit board with a hammer will likewise stop almost any criminal reading the data, even if you don't damage the platters at all!
The downside with drilling (or hammering) is that you can never re-use the drive. A single-pass overwrite, however, makes a drive safe to use again, even if you're giving it away or selling it to someone else -- including the Russian mafia!
Drilling is fine - Kromey