Re: Degausser recommendations

[Chris Edwards <chris () ENG GLA AC UK>]

InfoSec wrote:

| In most cases the HDD is damage beyond usage, especially if a 8000+ gauss
| (industrial strength) is used.  De-Gaussing is definitely for "destroying" -
| key word destroying...

Right - thanks!


And Ken Connelly wrote:

| Nuking a drive with a high-powered degausser may render the drive
| unusable, but I don't see how that is your problem.

When a failed drive is returned to vendor, they may be able to fix it.
Afterall, the failure might be something simple maybe like a controller
chip.  If we nuke with high-powered degausser the vendor may well _not_ be
able to fix it (economically), hence this is equivalent to us not
returning the failed drive.

Maintainance contracts where the vendor doesn't ask for the old drive back
are available, but presumably at a higher cost.

So by degaussing then returning we would effectively be cheating the
vendor out of this extra cost.