Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

I recover hard drives as part of my job.

I am sure some of you know this and others do not. But if you ever recycle your old computers or donate them, PLEASE tear out the hard drives and keep them in storage or physically destroy them. Smaller pieces the better.

Because when you delete files or format your drive, they aren't really gone until you write over those sectors on your hard drive. If I bought a used computer / hard drive on eBay or somewhere, I would put money I would be able to recover most of the data on those drives which probably have very important information that the seller had no idea was still on the drive.

So if you are going to get rid of old electronics, rip out the drives and destroy them, keep them in storage, or if you must get rid of them, get software that will wipe every hard drive sector by writing over it.

In the end, who really wants their important data stolen? Not I....

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

It's worth people knowing this sure, but...this goes under a category of 'personal security overkill' in my book.

If they want you they'll get you. If they don't want you, they won't bother recovering your drive.

Worth mentioning that just by doing a regular format (boot from a windows cd, remove partitions, create one big one and full format) you make it hard enough for all but the most determined to recover (ie hacker/gov't agency/random person), and then it goes back under 'if they want ya, they'll get ya' category.

Like I say, worth people knowing. A very powerful magnet will do the job too but leave it near (on) the platters for a few days.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

I would say overkill as well. But then again you never know. I read an article that a couple MIT students bought a ton of used drives and were able to recover tons of data such as credit cards and emails.

Our town has recycle days every year when you give away old computers. I just tear the drives out to be safe.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

Definitely a good idea to do what you can. For people who do have stuff to hide, who're probably more than we think lol, this is great info.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

Hahahahaha:D

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

All sensitive information goes on specific hard drives that will only be destroyed at the end of their useful lives and never be sold. Call me paranoid but for me it's better safe than sorry.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

Not sure if it's still around, but a free program called Boot and Nuke was a nice thing you could pop on a CD, boot off of, and wipe it all quite well.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

Yeah, DF, when are you going to recovery my HD For me.. sheesh..

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

Mail it to me!:)

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

I always do a good 7 or 9 pass wipe on the drive before I sell it, which is usually enough completely erase everything on it, depending on the drives age of course.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

at one job I did all I did was destroy data to the point it was un recoverable
we had a 10 pass data wipe setup. But this was a stock trading firm so they had tons of sensitive information, and account data that had billions of dollars at stake so its understandable why they had such rigorous data destruction policies.


Another guy I knew his way of destroying data was a tad more interesting he'd spin it up, and use a nail gun on it. He also poured thermite on it, and started it up. He was EXTREMELY paranoid ppl would pull his data off, but oddly his passwords were very easy to guess...

Personally last few drives I toasted I took the platters out, and used them as mirrors and other things :D


I've done drive recovery too real fun getting stuff off a drive that should be blank ;)

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

What kind of software is used to wipe data 10 times over?

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

I chopped mine up with a axe then started it on fire.... do you think thats good enough?:D

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

All drives from my household only leave after first being introduced to the shop vice, twice.  There will never be any recovering of my data.  When you say personal data... you probably dont think about those nude pics you took of eachother one drunken night.... or the sex talk you had between eachother.......  Info I dont want out there!

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

DoD software... some of it available on the net. But even then I can still recover it. We used to do that in labs in college, for computer forensics.
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RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

I was told by someone once... not sure who, that there's no way of erasing everything on a HDD 100%.
Smash it with a sledgehammer, burn it or bury it in the backyard he reckons...

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

YEAH!! when is the last time smashing something was the proper thing to do! I love chopping up hard drives:D

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

Last drives I disposed of saw the pointy end of a pick ax a few times.

Ken

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

Just send it to Hobby King for repair. It will never be seen again.

just kidding, I might be the only one, but have not had any problems with HK

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

i ate mine and took a laxative

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

Oh cool. You can recover classified data that has been wiped from a hard drive. It's so nice to know that our DOD secrets can be recovered by anyone in the right college course.

Give me a break.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

thats why you kill your hard drives dead.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

That's pretty original, if not painful.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

At some point in the past I bought a LARGE USB hard drive. Later I replaced it with a faster drive and didn't know what to do with it. I knew I didn't want to just give it away or sell it but destroying it seemed wasteful too. In the end I put it in the attic.

Time has passed and I ran into that drive the other day. I had to laugh. It's a 40GB drive. Utterly worthless by today's standards. I've got jump drives larger!

If you can't bring yourself to either sell your old hard drive or hit it with a sledge, just wait. It will get easier to do the latter. I'm very glad my 40GBs of data is not somewhere out there in the WWW ether.

RE: Word of Warning about Hard Drives
 

yup it was had a pile of interesting settings.

as for flash drives that data is permanently wiped when you delete it, and overwrite the affected sectors seeing unlike magnetic drives which retain a bit of the signature(cause the heads are not 100% accurate) once the state is changed its gone for good.

I do remember one company in China making the most secure flash hard drive ever that had 2 data self destruct buttons. If you pressed the green it would wipe all the blocks, and make them all 1's so you would have to reformat and be able to use it again. If you pressed the red button(I'm being serious here) it systematically went and fried EVERY single chip on the drive to the point they exploded so data recovery was 100% impossible it was pretty cool watching the demo.