Watch: Now this is how you securely erase data

If you're getting rid of your old laptops or hard drives, making sure that all your data is wiped off them first can be a pain. After all, the last thing you want is some nefarious dumpster-diver recovering your personal information or documents. However, while traditional methods are all well and good, there's nothing like the peace of mind that comes from smashing your storage devices into tiny little pieces with some heavy machinery (if your kit is slow and frustrating to use then this is also pretty stress-relieving).

That's exactly what security company F-Secure has done, with some help from the Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube. Using an industrial-grade press, they obliterated several different kinds of storage media and other tech, including hard drives, floppy disks, mobile phones and even (with the help of some liquid nitrogen) an office printer.

The people at Hydraulic Press also used an air cannon to destroy other items, including a tablet, a laptop and more. The results were even more spectacular, with chunks of circuitry and shards of plastic flying as the cannon demolished hardware.