Degaussing-101

What do you picture when you think of “destruction?” Hard drives can be destroyed in a variety of ways: pounded with an ax, shredded between metal teeth, dropped from a spaceship, and STILL contain data. There is only one good way to eliminate all data from a hard drive: degauss it. A degausser is a machine that generates a magnetic field for erasing magnetic storage media, such as hard drives and tape. If the gauss is sufficiently more powerful than the coercivity (resistance to being erased) of the drive, the data on the degaussed drive will be totally erased and become forensically unrecoverable. Degaussed drives should also be destroyed. Garner Products destroyers mangle hard drives such that that internal platters are bent and misshapen. This discourages data thieves from attempting to retrieve data from a degaussed drive. Learn more about degaussing and destruction in our latest blogs.