Garner Products manufactures a complete line of degaussers for all formats of tape and hard drives. Garner's degaussers will sanitize your media in order for you to meet HIPAA Media Re-Use & Media Disposal Mandates.

Degaussing gives you in-house control of all protected health information contained on any form of magnetic media, including tapes, diskettes and hard drives.

In under 30 seconds, you can completely remove all patient health information, data and formatting on any size hard drive or data tape.

When should I degauss my media?
Media should be degaussed before media re-use and media disposal.

What about hard drives that don't work?
Hard drives that are non-operational still retain information on the disc platter. Degaussing magnetically erases all of the information contained on the disc platter, thereby making the hard drive safe for disposal.

Are tapes re-useable after degaussing?
Yes, most tapes are re-usable after degaussing with the exception of a few like LTO. Tapes like LTO have a magnetic servo track written on the tape. Degaussing will erase this information leaving the LTO tape ready for disposal.

What are the benefits of degaussing tapes?
Many tape drive and tape manufacturers recommend degaussing to remove the formatting. Reformatting over existing formatting without first degaussing can cause read/write problems. Degaussing is the only way of removing existing formatting thereby allowing the tape to recover lost space and to be reformatted for different tape drives.

Are Hard Drives re-usable after degaussing?
No, hard drives are not reusable after degaussing because Garner's hard drive degaussers erase all data, formatting and control track (servo track) information. This information is contained on hard drives in magnetic patterns. Garner's hard drive degaussers remove all magnetic patterns eliminating the possibility of recovery and ready the hard drive for disposal.

For more information and to get your
Free HIPAA Media Re-Use & Disposal Guide
click on the Guide
or call us at 1-800-624-1903.

Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Secretary
45 CFR Parts 160, 162, and 164
Health Insurance Reform: Security
Standards; Final Rule

§ 164.310 Physical safeguards.

A covered entity must, in accordance with § 164.306:…

(d)(1) Standard: Device and media controls. Implement policies and procedures that govern the receipt and removal of hardware and electronic media that contain electronic protected health information into and out of a facility, and the movement of these items within the facility.

(2) Implementation specifications:

(i) Disposal (Required).

Implement policies and procedures to address the final disposition of electronic protected health information, and/or the hardware or electronic media on which it is stored.

(ii) Media re-use (Required).
Implement procedures for removal of Electronic protected health information from electronic media before the media are made available for re-use.

Meet HIPAA Media Re-Use & Disposal Mandates

Meet HIPAA Media Re-Use
& Disposal Mandates