full-disclosure - erase with magnet

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From: fulldisc at ultratux.org (Maarten)
Subject: erase with magnet

On Saturday 03 April 2004 23:18, Michal Zalewski wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Apr 2004, Tim wrote:

> Some folks made quite brave claims about inability to degauss a disk, one
> guy even claiming the field needed to accomplish this could possibly kill

Yeah... that would've been me.  Okay, that was indeed a bold statement ;-)

Not being aware of readily available degaussers, I would think the magnetic 
field neccessary will induce an electric field in the electronics of the 
drive that will be enough to kill the circuits. As for my statement "killing 
the operator", I'm afraid I had some visions of someone experimenting with 
tesla coils and very high capacity discharges. They were probably uncalled 
for. ;-)
I think that it is unwise to expose the human body to very strong magnetic 
fields but, granted, if you do not hold the degausser to your chest or 
against your skull you'll probably be just fine. ;-)

> the operator, but this seems to be quite silly considering there is a
> number of hardware degaussers for hard drives readily available on the
> market, some of them certified and used by fairly reputable organizations:
>
> http://www.periphman.com/degaussing/degaussers/v92.shtml

Quote:  "Do not operate the degausser if you have a pacemaker."

Maarten