So… What do you do with old CD backups? I mean, really old CD backups that you no longer feel any compulsion to store in the closet?
The other day, when I realized the point had come where I will never have to go back to GDU again (except to return the keys to their office, which I’ll do on the 31st), I decided to shovel everything that has to do with that place out of my home office. This entailed filling the blue barrel to its rim, since I work at home a lot and so my office contains a lot of printouts and digital media related to the job.
It also dragged along with it a lot of other junk of the sort that piles up like dust. Some of it, you suspect you might need some day, so you stash it in the closet. Some, you’re just too lazy to figure out what to do with it, so you stash it in the closet. And some you really should keep, so you stash it in the closet.
So there was plenty of stuff to empty out.
In amongst all that junk were several large containers of old CDs and Zip disks containing Quicken and Word backups, none of which are relevant to anything today. Despite their antiquity, though, they do contain personal information that I’d just as soon not have seen by any random viewers, especially of the sort who go through trash.
The Zip disks were easy to disable: a tap with a hammer dents the metal disk in the center, which I expect will render them unusable.
But all those CDs… That’s another matter. There are hundreds of them. Many are e-books I sold to my students on the side, to help generate something closer to a living wage than GDU pays its lecturers. I don’t give a damn whether anyone reads those. But some contain personal information—because I didn’t have an external disk drive on those old PCs, I was in the habit of backing up Quicken, Excel, and Word files regularly.
Breaking them is problematic. They can be shattered if you hit them hard enough with a hammer. But “shatter” is the operative term: they scatter glass-like shards all over the place, some of which want to fly up into your face.
I understand some shredders will grind them up. Mine will take credit cards, but I’m not so sure about CDs. Just as soon not wreck that thing.
So the question is: How can I render these things unusable without making an unholy mess?
Image: Pbroks13, CD Layers. Wikimedia Commons.