how to mass-erase vhs tapes?

n0fX

Hi guys.

I am still fairly new to this site , so maybe this is not the right forum but here goes anyway.

We have about 200 old cctv security cassette tapes (just normal tapes recorded on time-lapse) but I need them erased before throwing them out.

Obviously I could just tape over them but it would take months. I was looking up neodymium magnets also but they aren't 100% effective at blanking them.

Is there any service in Ireland that has a giant degaussing machine or something? Or has anyone had success with the magnets? Thanks.

Random

Why not just try this?



Have I missed something blatently obvious?

n0fX

I'm not sure fire would erase the actual tape, it would melt the plastic casing alright making it very hard to retrieve but still not impossible. The data is magnetically encoded.

I don't have the time to take the actual tape out of each cassette to burn that. There's too many of them.

Kimbot

n0fX wrote: »

The data is magnetically encoded.

So run a powerful magnet across them??

GerardKeating

n0fX wrote: »

Hi guys.

I am still fairly new to this site , so maybe this is not the right forum but here goes anyway.

We have about 200 old cctv security cassette tapes (just normal tapes recorded on time-lapse) but I need them erased before throwing them out.

Obviously I could just tape over them but it would take months. I was looking up neodymium magnets also but they aren't 100% effective at blanking them.

Is there any service in Ireland that has a giant degaussing machine or something? Or has anyone had success with the magnets? Thanks.

Google some commercial schredding services.

Creamy Goodness

magnet maybe?
or
hammer?

FredH3as

Tape concentration camp?

neil_hosey

rent one of those tree shredders for a day and feck them all in it..

im serious.

Unregistered.

n0fX wrote: »

Hi guys.

I am still fairly new to this site , so maybe this is not the right forum but here goes anyway.

We have about 200 old cctv security cassette tapes (just normal tapes recorded on time-lapse) but I need them erased before throwing them out.

Obviously I could just tape over them but it would take months. I was looking up neodymium magnets also but they aren't 100% effective at blanking them.

Is there any service in Ireland that has a giant degaussing machine or something? Or has anyone had success with the magnets? Thanks.

Hand them all in to a creche, or a day care with a bunch of 2 year olds. They'll soon destroy 'em heh heh...

Capt'n Midnight

get a big degausser for a grand or two

or try to find out where to rent / borrow one , will do a few at a time

Overheal

Electro Magnetic Pulse!

Realistically a Stereo Magnet would do it - someone was throwing out a broken amp - stole the magnet: those things are pretty fun.

Capt'n Midnight

you could do a mythbusters on it
pop them into a microwave oven or a real oven :pac:
not recommended

you only need to melt the plastic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_film_(biaxially_oriented)
Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate
boPET film is used as the substrate in practically all magnetic recording tapes and floppy disks.

http://209.196.51.33/Media/MediaManager/Mylar.pdf
melting point 260C
strong acids and bases may hydrolyze the film

Dissolve
looks like it will dissolve in boiling anti freeze, 197C not recommended though since flammable and poisonous and the anti-freeze breaks down at 230-250C

EvilMonkey

n0fX wrote: »

I'm not sure fire would erase the actual tape, it would melt the plastic casing alright making it very hard to retrieve but still not impossible. The data is magnetically encoded.

I don't have the time to take the actual tape out of each cassette to burn that. There's too many of them.

If you think they will be recovered after a fire, no other method will be better, Fire will melt the tape. If they are erased it will be easier to recover than fire. Your best bet is to get them shredded.

Overheal

Shredding and/or straight to recycling or landfill.

10-10-20

We use Greenstar in Bray to destroy hard-drives. They charge €4.50 per unit and offer a fully tracable service. They get milled down to small chunks.
I have 250 HDD's to drop down to them soon.
Most of the guys who recycle will offer this service.

BrokenArrows

10-10-20 wrote: »

We use Greenstar in Bray to destroy hard-drives. They charge €4.50 per unit and offer a fully tracable service. They get milled down to small chunks.
I have 250 HDD's to drop down to them soon.
Most of the guys who recycle will offer this service.

so instead of wiping them and selling them all for some $$$ your paying someone to destroy them??

does recession mean anything to you. haha!!

mp3guy

Buy a small Neodymium Magnet and simply rub it over the cassette a few times.

biko

Give them to my ex. She'll tape them over with Sex and the city episodes :mad:

Thoie

A bit tedious, but cheap, and less time consuming than recording over them.

Ask the security guards to take a bundle of tapes during each shift and pull the flippy cover bit off a few at a time - however many they get to during a shift. When all the flippy covers are off, line up a few at a time, break the tape, and feed into a shredder (stack them on the edge of the shredder doing a few at a time). The action of the shredder will pull the tape out.

Sparkicks

This might seem pretty trivial but a very valid method. Hire your friends kids or some under 18 teens for a small job and pay them to take all the tape out of the vhs's and then take them and burn them... No effort, Hardly any cost and you're giving people jobs. you could also get your company shreder and pay them to put them through it. In the end you're looking at probably around 40 euros max (5 hours of 8euro each)

yoyo

BrokenArrows wrote: »

so instead of wiping them and selling them all for some $$$ your paying someone to destroy them??

does recession mean anything to you. haha!!

Even the likes of a DBan wipe is recoverable, not to mention formatting 250+ hard disks would be a time consuming task! The only way to totally ensure a hard disks data is gone forever is to get them professionally shredded or manually take out the platters and melt them with the likes of a blow torch or something, :pac:

Nick

Sparkicks

yoyo wrote: »

Even the likes of a DBan wipe is recoverable, not to mention formatting 250+ hard disks would be a time consuming task! The only way to totally ensure a hard disks data is gone forever is to get them professionally shredded or manually take out the platters and melt them with the likes of a blow torch or something, :pac:

Nick

They're not hard drives they're vhs. You know cassette tapes that came before dvds.

yoyo

Sparkicks wrote: »

They're not hard drives they're vhs. You know cassette tapes that came before dvds.

I was refering to This post

Nick