Ignoramus23924 wrote:

I have a little industrial demagnetizer from a grinding shop. Can this
thing erase contents of hard drives securely? Or the magnetic field is
not string enough? I have a pile of old HDs awaiting destruction.

THe alternative is my press, which is more of a PITA.

Thanks

My brother uses a 1" neodymium magnet to find conduit and nails in walls. He is an
electrician. One day he forgot the magnet was in his pocket and picked up his laptop that
was running on batteries. He said that as the laptop came near his pocket he heard the
windows shutdown song and his laptop never booted completely again.

Using Spinrite to look at various cylinders on the disk, I determined he wiped a number of
cylinders out in an instant.

I suspect that if you power up the drive and use a similar sized magnet and do a slow wipe
with the magnet on top and bottom of drive that disk will be dead forever.

I hope you are not involved in anything that requires that level of paranoia. A hit with
a hammer on the controller board would be enough to stop the curious at the landfill.

I have a pile of drives I need to kill for good practice, I'm going to mine them for
magnets. That might be a good job for your son. Give him some torx screwdrivers and tell
him to take them apart and find the magnets. By the time he is done, that drive will be
dead enough unless the FBI or CIA wants you for something.


Wes
--
"Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect
government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home
in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller