Question : Problem: Can a magnet erase a HDD, but leave the drive in a re-usable state?

In the course of conributing to this thread:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Security/Win_Security/Q_21931773.html#17190470

the question of hard drives and magnets came up.

It seems to me that a magnetized hard drive would equal a dead hard drive...but jvuz disagrees.

Has anyone ever done this? (erased a HDD with a magnet and then reused the drive)

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Personally, if I could remove a hard disk from a machine, stroke it with a huge bar magnet to permanently erase all data, and then remount it and reinstall Windows,it would save a serious amount of time in the workshop.

Is it feasible?  Has anyone out there ever done this?

Answer : Problem: Can a magnet erase a HDD, but leave the drive in a re-usable state?

Many video facility houses use bulk erasers.

Which prompted a google find: http://www.datadev.com

...quite some list of hdd degaussers there.
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