What is the universal (world wide) understanding behind degaussing harddisks?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 3 Apr 2018 11:06:26 -0500, Tommy Trussell wrote:
>In my (very limited) experience, one can use an "old fashioned" tape
>"degausser" aka "demagnetizer" on a hard disk, but after doing so the
>drive is generally "toast."

I'm an old audio and video engineer. I don't own this huge thingy to
degauss old PAL tube TV sets, when they start to display colours like
"Never Twice the Same Color" television sets from other countries, but
I still own a degausser for analog tape head and capstan. I guess it
could harm data on a HDD, but I seriously doubt that it is able to
completely remove data from a HDD. The solid metal casing of a HDD more
likely could damage a degausser.