hard drive degaussers – understanding all there is to know about them
TRANSCRIPT
Article: Solstice-inc.com
HARD DRIVE DEGAUSSERS – UNDERSTANDING ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT THEM
If it were a decade ago, terms like identity theft and data security would have meant nothing other than science
fiction concepts. It would have been something you had heard of in a movie about corporate espionage and high end
internet hacking. But today, these issues are very much a concern for the everyday man. More and more people are
now becoming prone to the dangers of cyber crimes and it is of paramount importance that you do whatever you
can to protect yourself against any impending attacks or data thefts.
Individuals and businesses alike should be acutely aware of the importance of protecting personal data, as well as
extremely diligent in the process of destroying old or unneeded data. Cyber criminals can just as easily find valuable
pieces of information hidden in the old data that you consider garbage. This is where concepts like hard drive
degaussing can actually go a long way and protect you against identity thefts and similar online attacks.
The system is considered to be one of the safest and most reliable methods to remove all of your data from a
particular hard drive or magnetic computer tape media. Simply put, hard drive degaussing is a magnetic field using
an alternating field of sufficient intensity to saturate the media. The magnetic field is then slowly withdrawn or
reduced and the magnetic media is left in a magnetic neutral state, or erased. In another aspect of the process, you
can also erase a program known as servo from the hard drive which is actually installed by the manufacturer. By
doing so, you are rendering a hard drive useless and incapable of yielding any old data that might have once been
stored on it.
One of the most common misconceptions about hard drive degaussers and the related processes is that it has to be
Department of Defence (DOD) or National Security Agency (NSA) or Sarbanes-Oxley, FACTA, or HIPAA compliant.
These regulations do dictate the requirements and compliances that have to be taken to erase sensitive data from
hard drives but they are silent about a specific way or equipment that should be used to do so. It is mandatory that
you completely remove all proprietary data from a computer data storage media but you are free to choose the
mode of doing so in all respects.
Another misconception that is widely circulated in this field is that the hard drive degausser you are using should be
approved by the DOD. The DOD does not approve of anything, but merely recommends. If a manufacturer presents a
degausser to DOD and the specifications claim it will erase a 300 GB hard drive, then DOD would probably add it to
their list of recommended products. There are in fact very few approved products in this list and even they were
blessed several years ago. Newer products in this industry are far more effective and capable of handling current day
data removal requirements. You can just as easily give them a try.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jules Cooper is an expert in data storage and copying technology and likes to write many interesting articles and
blogs, helping people understand the concept and make the best of the methods available in the market for the
purpose. She recommends Solstice-inc.com as the best name to trust for USB duplicators, hard drive erasers,
degaussers and more.