Re: Ways to *REALLY* erase a hard drive?

From: Barry Lennox (rianz.15.barryl_at_neverbox.com)
Date: 02/11/05 

Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 08:00:53 +1300

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:58:03 GMT, "Greysky"
<greyskynospam@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>I recently had a 80 gig Maxtor hard drive die on me. Though it was still
>under warranty (just) I decided a much better use for it was to turn it into
>a show-and-tell for the local elementary school kids. I finally managed to
>get the cover off the thing, exposing the inner platters. Someone told me a
>Torx 10 would fit those crazy screws on the cover plate - they were wrong.
>I had to drill them off. Now, I need to know a sure fire way of wiping data
>off the platters for good. The machine died before I could erase it inside
>the computer, so far I have a bunch of 'super magnets' which I dropped
>directly onto the platters and let them stay there overnight. Do you think
>this is enough? I would like to get them as deleted as I can possibly get
>them, but still be able to use the drive as a demonstration device for the
>kids. Thanks.
>

Just a magnetic degausser works, but you need a reasonably powerful
device. IIRC you require about 3500-4500 gauss for HDDs and DAT tapes,
while most of the low-cost commercial devices are around 1000 gauss.

There's some info at http://www.datalinksales.com/degaussers/home.htm

I used to use one that look a little like a microwave oven, and the
manufacturers blurb stated it used a charged cap dumped through a
coil. Never saw a schematic or got to look at it's guts however.

Barry Lennox

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Ways to *REALLY* erase a hard drive?
    ... > under warranty I decided a much better use for it was to turn it into ... > get the cover off the thing, exposing the inner platters. ... Super magnets will not do a bulk erase od the disk. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Ways to *REALLY* erase a hard drive?
    ... >under warranty I decided a much better use for it was to turn it into ... >get the cover off the thing, exposing the inner platters. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Ways to *REALLY* erase a hard drive?
    ... "John Larkin" wrote in ... >>get the cover off the thing, exposing the inner platters. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)