full-disclosure - Erasing a hard disk easily

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From: KileyP at nv.doe.gov (Kiley, Patrick M. (IARC))
Subject: Erasing a hard disk easily

We actually used a hard drive shredder for defective drives that could not
be erased easily.  That thing went through 200 drives in about 10 minutes.
Pretty cool to watch, think "wood chipper for hard drives"   :)

-----Original Message-----
From: amilabs [mailto:amilabs@...online.net] 
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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