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DIY HDD degauser?

Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
What would be involved in a degauser, is it basically just a large coil that a hard drive is put into and high current is passed through, and the hard drive is moved around? Or is there way more to it than that? How much power does it really need to totally erase the platters? Could I not wrap a couple thousand turns of wire around a ABS pipe, slide the HDD in, apply 12VDC to it and let it sit for a few minutes? What affects the magnetic force of the coil, is it more the number of turns, current drawn? So is lot of turns with thick wire better than lot of turns with thin wire? I suppose professional grade degausser use lot of capacitors to give a huge sudden jolt, is this needed, or can it just sit longer in a less powerful coil?

I don't know why, but I just have the urge to build one, but if I'm going to do that, I want it to still work. 😀
 
In a previous small scale situation I used the sub speaker from a Logitech Z5500 system that had blown. I would set HDs on the cone of the blown speaker with the speaker facing up and crank 30 40 and 60hz tones through it at max volume. The whole setup was tied down so it wouldn't move.

The Hd was essentially scrambled beyond any recovery after that.

Hard drives are hard to erase because not only are the magnets inside them very powerful they are also encased in mu-metal which lowers the effects of the earths magnetic field on them.
 
Oh and I'd probably be putting just the platters in the degauser, not the whole drives.

I realized ABS pipe seems like the perfect thing to wrap wire around for this application, so I'd basically just pile all the platters, and let it go for a bit. Shuffle them around, scratch em etc.
 
According to information from some manufacturers of hard disk erasers, the magnetic field is 5x - 10x stronger than those for video tape erasers, and they draw a few thousand watts.

I would worry about a DIY degausser giving a false sense of security by destroying the heads and maybe the motors, rendering the HDD unreadable through ordinary means but leaving the data sufficiently intact to still be read by transplanting the platters into another HDD.
 
Yeah I was thinking that too. It's kinda hard to validate whether or not it actually does work well. Is there any way to gauge it though? Like if I put a hard drive magnet in it and it flings it across the room, is it a good indication it has enough power to destroy the contents of the platters?

Another project I was thinking that would be fun but more advanced is an induction coil. Just melt the whole thing lol.
 
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