On Tuesday 21 January 2003 20:01, Steven Elling wrote:
> I wish I could find the article, but I can't right now.  In short, the
> only way to securely erase data from any magnetic media is to burn it.

I found the article.

Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory

Peter Gutmann
Department of Computer Science
University of Auckland

http://rootprompt.org/article.php3?article=473

I was a little off on the data being readable from the harddrive.

"In addition, like physical destruction, it [degaussing] requires highly 
specialised equipment which is expensive and difficult to obtain (one 
example of an adequate degausser was the 2.5 MW Navy research magnet used 
by a former Pentagon site manager to degauss a 14" hard drive for 1« 
minutes. It bent the platters on the drive and probably succeeded in 
erasing it beyond the capabilities of any data recovery attempts."