Degaussing
The act of using a magnet to destroy data stored on magnetic media to prevent data leakage attacks or events. For modern large-capacity drives, the strength of the
magnetic field needed to sanitize the data is often sufficient to damage the drive itself.
Purging
The process of erasing media so it can be reused in a less secure environment.
Clearing (overwriting)
A method of sufficiently deleting media that will be reused in the same secured environment. Also known as overwriting.
Encryption
Best used for SSD drives for data remanence remains on the drive.