[NBLUG/talk] OT: Bulk erasure

[Sebastian]

(Apologies if this makes it to the list twice)

I'm getting rid of a number of tapes (DLT & DAT) as well as some hard
disks (mostly standard IDE), and I wish to erase them, but not destroy
them.

By erase, I mean that I don't wish the data to be recoverable without
spending  a lot of time, possibly a lot of money to get at it. So
fdisk/format is out, but the expensive and time-consuming commercial
software is unnatractive and possibly overkill.

I'm trying DBAN <http://dban.sourceforge.net/> on some, but it takes a
very long time per disk, and can't help with the tapes.

How big of a magnet do I need to mess up the tapes really well? Like a car
speaker magnet? Will that technique also work on hard disks?

TIA