Wipe hard drives the easy way – use a degausser:
“What is degaussing? It’s what one does to wipe hard drives, and it’s the most effective method to insure total data destruction. Whether it’s your personal computer or a hard disk drive containing information about clients, it’s likely that at some point you’ll need to wipe hard drives.”
Degaussing is the act of de-magnetizing a hard drive and therefore erasing the data on it, and it will wipe hard drives clean. Degaussing is an NSA approved method wiping hard hard drives. Think about that: if the CIA is going to wipe hard drives, they degauss them. For total assurance, they will crush them thereafter.
It is recommended that after using a degausser to wipe a hard drive, a drive destroyer device is used to complete the secure data erasure. If you’re not clear as to how a deguasser works, it’s pretty straightforward:
A degausser contains giant capacitors that generate an enormous magnetic pulse. The most serious degaussers create two pulses, a positive pulse and a negative pulse. This pulse is contained within magnetic shielding. Any electronic media exposed to the pulse(s) within the shielding are instantly demagnetized. This will thoroughly wipe a hard drive, or a storage tape, or a security card.
Via the hard drive destruction experts over at Proton Data Security:
“Software wipes simply overwrites the data on the hard disk drive and serve as a rudimentary approach to denying access to important information. Data hackers can still find and pull the data stored there. It also takes hours to conduct, and don’t always work on every system. This lack of security should be extremely alarming for companies looking for an easy way out of disposing old media. They should securely wipe hard drives, the first time every time.”
