How to Erase Your Computer Hard Drive

How do you ‘erase your computer hard drive?’ Well, securely erasing a hard drive is a fairly simple process which basically involves you taking your hard drive out of your computer or laptop, and using a special machine called a degausser to erase all the data from it.

To erase your computer hard drive, here’s what you have to do:

1. Take the Hard Drive out of your PC
2. Get access to a special machine aka degausser
3. Use the degausser
4. Everything on the Hard drive is erased in seconds
5. That’s it!  You’re done!  It’s gone!
6. Next, you can send your Hard Drive or computer anywhere for recycling and you know no one can use it to steal your identity or your company secrets
7. Or, you can go one step further and physically destroy it using a hard drive crusher

A degausser subjects the hard drive to a high-energy magnetic field which scrambles all of the minute particles of recorded data into a random and completely unreadable configuration. It does this by passing the hard drive through a strong magnetic field, rearranging the polarity of the hard drive particles. Because all of the recorded data is stored on the hard drive’s Platter, this is what you need to destroy and degaussing does this effectively and most of all securely.

One benefit of using a degausser to erase your computer hard drive is that you can do it in-house meaning you can retain absolute control of your data and produce a record or complete audit trail of your media destruction. For more information please see our Data Destruction Auditor.

Degaussers come in a variety of sizes and the model you need will depend on the volume of hard drives you need to dispose of. There’s also a difference between manual and automatic degaussers. Manual degaussers like the V660 HDD Evo allows you to erase up to 20 hard drives every hour whereas an automatic degausser like the DataGone allows you to erase up to 200 every hour. You need to ensure that the degausser you need is powerful enough to completely erase the drive. If you’re bound by the restraints of government security compliance directives, then you may wish to consider an NSA approved degausser such as the SDD Master.

As a standard degausser, the V660 HDD Evo is an effective yet economical machine, it also offers users unique, remote control operation. Once the hard drive is placed onto the degausser, the magnetic force can be applied via the infrared remote control, which means the operator does not have to be near or even touch the degausser while the degauss process is applied.

There’s also the option of crushing the hard drives after they have been degaussed using a cruncher like our Crunch 250. These are powerful and fast media destroyers that are simple and safe to use, plus you’ll be safe in the knowledge that the destruction of media is guaranteed. The Crunch 250 can destroy 250 hard drives every hour and will provide tangible evidence that the drive is unusable.

VS Security Products have been manufacturing degaussers for more than 30 years. We have a range of units offering answers to the Hard Drive Erase question such as the DataGauss, DataGone and SDD Master to name but a few. 

For more information on how to Erase Hard Drives and protect your data, please contact us at [email protected]