subject: Hard Drive Degaussing Protection Against Information Theft! [print this page] The first time I heard about hard drive degaussers, I had absolutely no idea how important it could prove for me. I simply took it to be yet another fancy gadget that worked with a computer, till I finally understood how it actually worked.
Why Hard Drive Degaussing?
We often need to dispose old hard drives when they stop functioning optimally, or when we are planning to upgrade. In most cases, we simply delete the files that are present on the old hard drive. Other tech savvy people may try and format the hard drive to be sure about the data deletion.
However, these are not really effective methods to destroy data present on your hard drives. A proper data recovery procedure may easily retrievethe data. This offers to be a serious threat for businesses and individuals alike, which is where hard drive degaussing becomes useful.
How do Drive Degaussers Work?
Hard drives use a magnetic field to store data. When powered up, a magnetic field is generated in the drive, which ultimately helps with storing the data in a binary format on the disk. However, if an external magnetic field, much stronger than the internal magnetic field of the hard drive, is applied on the hard drive, the data gets destroyed forever, and is not retrievable anymore.
This is exactly what hard drive degaussers do. Using a highly powerful magnetic field, it destroys all data present on any hard drive. This however results in a huge amount of heat generation, and in most cases can destroy the hard drive completely.
While hard drive degaussing work with hard drives, magnetic tape degaussing equipment can help destroy data from magnetic tapes. In most cases, the tapes are left in no position to be reused anymore they are generally completely damaged.
Should You Employ A Professional Degaussing Company?
It is most likely that you have never degaussed a hard drive on your own. Moreover, disposing old hard drives is not a very common thing to do. For this reason, purchasing drive degaussers may not be a very profitable proposition for you.
Instead, it is much more convenient to employ a professional hard drive degaussing company to do the work for you occasionally, as and when required. Not only will this be more cost effective, but an experienced technician is bound to do the job for you much more efficiently.
There are a huge number of companies that rent out drive degaussers or provide hard drive degaussing services to businesses and individuals. Simply search on the internet for such service providers. There will be a huge number of options for you to choose from.
Just ensure that you are working with a reliable and experienced company offering hard drive degaussing services. Even if you plan to rent drive degaussers and eliminate all data from your hard drives, make sure you know the procedure well. Hard drive degaussing results in a considerable amount of heat generation. You must ensure that you have taken the right precautionary steps to prevent any problems arising during the process!
