Les Mikesell wrote:
Les wrote:
A straight magnet can mess it up a bit, but I don't know about total
erasure. Generally degaussing takes an AC field, such as that from the
degausing strip around a TV set or monitor (you degause tube type
monitors and tv's to keep the color guns from being biased and giving
fringes around the images). And a hard disk drive is "saturation" type
recording, and some of the new ones use a very deep form of recording
that is different from the surface recording done on magnetic tape. So
if you wish to degauss a drive (remove all forms of data including
formatting and bad sector stuff), then a very high strength degaussing
platform is needed. Or a 5 lb or heavier hammer applied with gusto to
the platters seems to do a pretty thorough job, unless you are
discussing state secrets or the next advent of computing.
Or use that hammer to drive a small steel punch all the way through the
drive. It's quick and someone would have to be pretty determined to get
any data back after that.
The newer platters are much harder as we found out when we tried to cut
some drives up with a metal saw. To hard.
I read an article of using "Coke" (I prefer Pepsi) and drill a few holes
in the top of the case. Fill with Coke and let sit. Soon the surface
of the platters are now etched.
I was going through some old drives and destroying them. I ended up
just drilling holes and soaking them in water. Destroyed the circuit
boards with a hammer as well.
It would be interesting what size of magnetic field is necessary to
fully erase a drive still in it's case.
I did find this.
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=97378
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