[wplug] degaussing tapes and hard drives

[Poyner, Brandon]

For the most part it's not possible to erase these tapes and hard drives by overwriting them.  The reason these SDLT tapes are "bad" is that they consistently throw I/O errors when any writing is attempted.  I also have a tape that will rip the leader right off the SDLT drive as soon as it is loaded, which requires a technician to come on site to fix the drive.  I have also come across hard drives that refuse to spin up, but if somebody were to replace the appropriate parts the data is still good.
 
The SDLT tapes are still under warranty, provided you can prove you didn't abuse them and stored them properly.  There are 2 options really.  The first is to destroy the tapes, which will be costly, and lose the tapes from my pool.  The other is to degauss the tapes, probably at some expense, and then get the tapes replaced under warranty.  
 
Unfortunately not just any degausser will do.  SDLT has a fairly high magnetic coercivity.  Certain media, such as cassette tapes and VHS tapes, can be erased very easily with just about any degausser.  Commercial units that can degauss SDLT and hard drives seem to start around $2,000.  There are companies I can mail the tapes to and they will degauss for $5/tape, or $2/tape in bulk quantities.  I'm sure many of us have read about backup tapes getting lost in the mail, especially now that California has a privacy disclosure law.  I'm not comfortable going that route right now.
 
-----Original Message----- 
From: wplug-bounces+bpoyner=ccac.edu at wplug.org on behalf of Duncan Hutty 
Sent: Tue 2/21/2006 10:19 PM 
To: General user list 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [wplug] degaussing tapes and hard drives



	Poyner, Brandon wrote:
	> Does anybody have suggestions on degaussing SDLT media and hard drives
	> without buying a $2,000+ unit?  I'm looking to get it done locally.  I
	> don't want to destroy the tapes for warranty reasons, and I don't want
	> to send them far offsite for security reasons.  The drives I'm willing
	> to destroy and/or degauss.  It looks like I need something with at least
	> a 4000 gauss field strength.
	> 
	
	Would you elaborate a little on the "warranty reasons"? I think it's
	generally considered that trying to remove data from (lots of) old tapes
	is not worth the expense and that destruction is the way forward.
	
	Duncan Hutty
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