In article ,
Ignoramus6479 wrote:

On 2011-05-27, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
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.

Not likely strong enough.

My standard approach is pounding the disk into a shapeless blob using a
five-pound hammer and an anvil. I put the drive in a freezer bag (heavy
polyethylene) first so the parts don't fly everywhere.

You cannot do that with a 5 lb sledge. The hard drive will not break.

Really? It works well enough for my purposes. Maybe NSA could get data
off the result, but nobody else can. I use a drilling hammer and big
boulder.

But you are free to use any size hammer you can swing.

Joe Gwinn