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.
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
