How much wiping do you do? :)

[jmanley at aledobb.com (Jim Manley)]

Chris Merkel wrote:
> > In my world, disks with sensitive data are either zapped in a degausser
> > or dropped into a shredder.  The customer doesn't allow overwriting of
> > any kind.
> >
> > Unclass drives are just overwritten since there's really nothing on them
> > that is worth the national lab type of attack necessary to get any
> > residual bits off them.
>
> Just for the sake of everyone on-list, it may be worth noting two
> things about degaussing:
>
> 1. A strong magnet or a bulk tape eraser won't cut it for hard drives.
> You're using a special-purpose degausser, probably a Garner model?
Exactly.  The thing looks like an oversize commercial microwave.  Makes
a heck of a racket when you pop the drive. There's enough energy release
to cause the drives to be physically re-arranged in the deguassing
chamber.  You start out with a nice neat stack, hit the button a couple
of times, and end up with drives jumbled all over the place.

> 2. Degaussing also erases the control track information, which means
> that you can't reuse the drive. It's like shredding without the sharp
> edges.
Erases the control track and pretty much fries any programmable devices
on the controller board.  In this case, not being able to reuse the
drives is a good thing.