full-disclosure - Erasing a hard disk easily

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From: Michael.Schmidt at T-Mobile.com (Schmidt, Michael R.)
Subject: Erasing a hard disk easily

IDE drives are typically formatted "at the factory" so you may actually make the drives unusable if you use a magnet.

Michael R. Schmidt

-----Original Message-----
From: full-disclosure-admin@...ts.netsys.com [mailto:full-disclosure-admin@...ts.netsys.com]On Behalf Of amilabs
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 11:49 AM
To: full-disclosure@...ts.netsys.com
Subject: [Full-Disclosure] Erasing a hard disk easily

I have a bunch of old computers I would like to donate. Old laptops with win
95/98 on them and some old tower desktops all circa 1995-2k.
I would like to know if I can just use a magnet to completely wipe out the
data for obvious security reasons. I have heard about the disk erasers like
active kill and Perl utilities for this but with the ability of data
ghosting etc. is this enough? Can I use a big magnet like a speaker magnet
or something like a degasser to just wipe out the data without having to
boot these old boxes and go through all the extra work.

Thanks

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