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Degausser and other methods of destroying hard drives

We have listed the four methods of destroying hard drives for you along with the pros and cons and why the “degausser” really doesn’t work.

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Degausser - or demagnetization.

Unfortunately, a hard disk degausser doesn’t work. It sounds so nice: you take a giant electromagnet, put your hard disk in it, and you’re done. Then we call it a degausser. However, the hard disk manufacturer has made sure that the magnetic disks are in what is called a Faraday cage. That is, the place where the disks with information sit that is totally shielded from all kinds of radiation. Now the manufacturer of the degausser promises that precisely HIS degausser is strong enough and reliable. But you never know for sure

With back up tapes, vhs tapes and bank cards it seems to work better, although even with these media you can never be completely sure. A number of experiments at our data security center in Uden have confirmed this. A hard disk is immediately defective if you even hold it near a degausser. This is because the electronics, which are on it outside, are damaged by the magnetic field. If you simply replace the circuit board afterwards, the hard disk will snort like new again and everything will still be there! Conclusion: the degausser does not work.

Burning or melting

Of course, this method works perfectly provided the temperature is high enough for long enough. It is impossible to carry out this process on site but one solves that by taking the data carriers to the incinerator with a huge show of force and lots of police in an armored car. The extremely high cost and extremely bad environmental effects mean that this method is not widely used. Safe it certainly is!

Software data destruction

A major advantage of software-based data destruction is that the hard disk remains in place. Then after the data destruction process, the computer is simply usable again. Moreover, if applied properly, it is a very secure method. Only software that overwrites the entire disk, with random strings of ones and zeros, truly removes information from the hard disk. We know Blancco, for example.

Much better than a wipe program:
hard disk sanitizer

With all wipe software, there is the problem of the disk being “wiped” while it is in a system. And research by IT Recycling has shown that there are situations where pieces of hard disk are skipped because there are things being taken care of in the system that the wipe software apparently has no control over. We use a hard disk sanitizer. That’s a device where you click a large number of hard drives into it. Then it completely overwrites the hard drives at the very lowest level, all at once. Wiping with a sanitizer is done much more thoroughly than with any software. Disadvantage of the sanitizer: it is an extremely expensive device. This is the reason why all our colleagues still use software even though it is less secure. The photo to the right shows IT Recycling’s hard disk sanitizer at work.

Physical destruction of the hard drive

A major disadvantage of this method is that the hard disk is lost and the computer loses much of its value. For physical destruction of hard disks, we have admired numerous fine devices on the Internet. One drills a hole in it, the next folds the hard disk in half. There are even trimmings on the market that push the motor out of a hard disk. All these amateurish little mechanisms are more or less transportable. However creative: all these devices offer false security. A damaged hard disk, whether it has a hole in it, is warped or without a motor, can simply be read again.

You should think of it as the destruction of paper information. If you crumple or tear up a paper document, it is not gone. To really destroy information, a hard disk really has to be completely broken up, very small pieces even. And oh yes, then there was a device that ingeniously cut off a small piece of a hard disk each time. This device was very expensive and as slow as it was unreliable. What does work perfectly is a shredder. This is a kind of huge coffee grinder that grinds the hard disk, so to speak. A shredder gives total security provided it grinds finely enough. Normally a shredder is a gigantic machine that cannot be taken on location. So the hard drives then have to go to the shredder: not a safe situation.

The best solution is for the shredder to come to the hard drives. And that can be done with IT Recycling’s mobile hard disk shredder.