On Jul 8, 2004, at 7:51 PM, John Robinson wrote: > The demagnetizer is made by Realistic, says on the side of the "brick" > shaped device that it is a high powered video/audio tape eraser. It > is literally shaped like an iron. It has an on/off button and a red > light telling you are zapping the item when the trigger is pulled. I > can't remember the cost, but it came from Radio Shack, have no idea if > they still sell them and I don't know if they will work on a hard > drive, but gosh it should as it is very heavy and I do know it wipes > the video and tape disk completely.
I'd do a lot of checking before using this to wipe a hard drive. Most of the hard drives made in the last few years are low-level formatted in the factory and can't be low-level formatted without special equipment. Even the software that has a low-level format option is usually only zeroing out blocks while letting the drive firmware map out the bad blocks. If the magnet actually erased the platter -- and I'm skeptical that it could, through the metal case -- the drive would need a low-level format. You might as well erase it with a sledgehammer. | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be July 27. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
