Can Degaussing an HDD Damage It?

[CookieSalesman]

Can a speck of dust degauss the surface of an HDD?

Or perhaps water?

If you grabbed an HDD with your hands, assuming you don't braise the surface, would THAT degauss it?

 

[jedishrfu]

Degaussing is done with a magnet so if your fingers were magnets then they could degauss the drive.

The other more likely scenario is getting a speck of dust on the drive (normally they are hermetically sealed) platter which winds up scratching the disk as it spins.

Another scenario is a head crash where the r/w head scratches the platter causing a loss of information.

More info on HDD:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk

Check out the topic on Integrity and Failure about two thirds into the document.

 

[davenn]

If you have opened a HDD to expose the platters
you can pretty much write the drive off. You will never be able to remove every speck of dust before resealing the drive
And anyone of the remaining specks is likely to cause the problems jedishrfu stated in his second sentence

you don't even need dust particles, if you inadvertently touched the surface with your finger, just the grease deposit will be enough to ruin it

cheers
Dave

 

[FainAvis]

And even if you can keep all dust out and not touch the platters with greasy fingers, how are you going to refill the hdd with helium? (Rhetorical question.)

 

[rcgldr]

If you have opened a HDD to expose the platters
you can pretty much write the drive off.

There are data recovery companies that do open HDD's in order to repair them, reseal them, and recover data. I assume they have some type of clean room.