Regional-nyc archive     > worry about what data might be on
them.... > Failing that, does anyone have any other good ideas
on how to dispose > of the things? Breaking the cartridges by
hand etc. is a non-starter, > there are too many of them.  Hand-
held tape degaussers are made specifically for the purpose of
erasing tapes for re-use. They were pretty common in the audio
and video recording worlds a couple of decades ago, and I do
seem to recall having seen ones for computer backup tapes as
well.  If you use one, however, you'll want to check very
carefully that it will be powerful enough to actually have some
effect on your particular tapes. There's a massive range in
coercivity between various tape formulations, and a degausser
designed for old-fashioned ferric oxide audio tapes may have no
effect at all on a more modern computer tape. You might have
better luck with a video tape degausser, particularly if your
tapes are one of the formats based on video tape, such as
Exabyte was, if I recall correctly.  C