Re: Fast and secure HDD erase?

"nemo_outis" <abc@xxxxxxx> wrote in
news:Xns983D96EB791CAabcxyzcom@xxxxxxxxx:

Borked Pseudo Mailed <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:1233f98708f04253b83977f7be1068eb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

People degauss hard drives every day without destroying them,
dumbass.


You may wish to reconsider.

With any modern drive a thorough degaussing would erase the servo
tracks as well as user data and render the drive useless (the
manufacturer, the only fellow who could realistically reestablish the
servo tracks, is almost certainly not going to be willing to do this
on a used drive. Even if he were willing, the cost would make it a
very unappealing approach.)

Moreover, the coercivity of the magnetic materials used in today's
drives is so high that enormous fields have to be applied (an 8000
Oersted external field applied through the case is required to
reliably erase typical 4000 Oe disk material). A field of this
magnitude will mangle the heads and risks distorting the disks
themselves.

In short, degaussing effective enough to erase data is certain to ruin
the drive.

Regards,


Here, as an example, is a slightly-behind-the-curve refurbished model that
produces 4000 Oe or so and can erase hard disk media up to about 2000 Oe
through the case. Note that the price makes even this used model
uneconomic unless its cost can be amortized against many, many drives.

http://www.datadev.com/ge4000.html




.

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