Erasing Data on a Dead Hard Drive

[kraegar]

We have a bigass magnetic degauser, for erasing data tapes at work. You turn it on, and spin the tapes slowly for 30 seconds, and it erases them. Works awesome on tapes. (We do periodic checks to be sure no data is left).

I tried it on a hard drive once... first, the drive was ripped out of my hand, the magnet took me by surprise. I turned it a few times,hard as hell to do, and the drive got REALLY warm.

Once I was done (did two 30 second passes on it) I popped in back in a PC. Some minor corruption, but a good 95% of the data was just fine. And this degauser is basically a giant electromagnet. Didn't do squat compared to what I thought it would.

Tony