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

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 3 Apr 2018 18:36:38 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>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.

Sorry for the German qoute [1].

At room temperature iron, nickel and cobalt interact with the degausser.

The German quote mentions an "Edelstahl-Blechdeckel" for HDDs, so this
could be a serious issue for the degausser.

[1]
"Festplatten-Gehäuse

Das Gehäuse einer Festplatte ist sehr massiv. Meist ist es ein aus
einer Aluminiumlegierung bestehendes Gussteil und mit einem
Edelstahl-Blechdeckel versehen." -
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festplattenlaufwerk#Festplatten-Geh%C3%A4use