Origin of excerpt. From Middle English excerpted from Latin excerptus past participle of excerpere to pick out ex-ex-carpere to pluck; see kerp-in Indo-European roots.
What is Degaussing. Degaussing is simply the act of erasing data from magnetic media. Sometimes it is referred to as sanitization.. It works by subjecting magnetic media to a strong magnetic field that removes data from data bearing surfaces. The magnetic field can be created either by powerful magnets or an electromagnetic discharge.
Â© Dieter Spears / Photodisc / Getty Images. To wipe a hard drive means to completely erase the drive of all information. Deleting everything does not wipe a hard drive and formatting does not [always] wipe a hard drive.You'll need to take an extra step to wipe the hard drive completely.When you format a hard drive or delete a partition, you're usually only deleting the file system, making the data invisible but not gone. A file recovery program or special hardware can easily recover the information. If you have more than one partition on a physical hard drive, you'll need to format those additional drives as well if you want to consider the entire physical disk as wiped. 2  If what you really want to do is just make sure that files you delete are really gone, a data wiping tool is more than you need.