How can I exterminate my private optical disks easily?

Question

I have been storing some private data (mostly documents) in CDs and DVDs for a long time. Now they have become obsolete and unnecessary, so I am going to throw them all to garbage can.

What I want to do is to make them unreadable by an easy method. I don't want to scrape them one by one, or to burn them all. I don't need to thoroughly exterminate the data as there are no any governmental secret files in them; I just want to make sure when somebody finds one in the garbage piles, he shouldn't be able to read the data by an optical disk drive. So I need an easy and non-time-consuming method.

Answer 1

I think cutting them in half using a pair of scissors would be your quickest fix. You could ask if someone you know has a paper/CD shredder which would also be a quick fix.

Answer 2

You could snap them in half, but they might shatter so you'd need to beware of flying pieces - so it's not to be recommended. A well placed hammer blow would do the job just as well and you could wrap the discs in a bag to contain the pieces.

Answer 3

Use this on both sides of the disc:

Answer 4

I don't know how this can be healthy but you could try to cook them in a microwave owen for some seconds.