secure data erasing

[Wing Wong]

Huh.. original got munged:

http://www.spectrumwest.com/Attach2.htm

Degaussing risks not only wiping the track data, but also damaging the
perm magnets as well as the servo coils themselves. All of this risks
rendering the hard drive unusable. If the purpose is to reuse the hard
drives(as data devices), then degaussing is a bad idea.

As others have noted, the hammer approach would do limited damage to
the actual platters. The disk won't be usable afterwards, but the data
can still be recovered, etc.

Btw, has the decision maker decided where this degausser would operate
so that it won't damage/affect devices not slated for
wiping/destruction?

Wing.

> On 12/7/05, Alvin Oga <alvin at mail.linux-consulting.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > hi ya jim
> >
> > On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, Jim Kavitsky wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Hi, Alvin. Are you going to be retaining possession of the disks, or do
> > > they have to go off site? I'm also curious as to why software erasure is
> > > not an option.
> >
> > not my choice ( yet )
> >
> > they want degaussing for whatever reason ... :-)
> >
> > > Is it a matter of being too labor intensive for the
> > > number of devices that you have? The DoD has published data erasure
> > > standards for classified hard drives that specify bit patterns and
> > > number of passes required to eliminate residual data traces. Several of
> > > the software vendors out there claim to be DoD compliant, including this
> > > one:
> > >
> > > http://www.eraseyourharddrive.com
> >
> > it doesn't need to be dod compliant
> >
> > and if i was using sw to erase it, i'd just use dd if=/dev/random and loop
> > it 10x or something
> >
> > c ya
> > alvin
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Wing Wong
> wingedpower at gmail.com



--
Wing Wong
wingedpower at gmail.com