This is why if you have personal information on your hard disk, you should encrypt it.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/09/columbia.data.ap/index.html?eref=rss_tech
FTA:
Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.
“When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn’t even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned, and the edges were melted,” said Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. “It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot.”
In addition to making your data secure against theft, It’s a lot easier to encrypt in the first place, than have to worry about destroying your drive when you’re done.