I Just Bought Your Hard Drive

[Werewolf]

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2006/06/one_year_ago_ha.html#posts

This is kind'a disturbing and another reason to take our HD's to the range and use'em as targets when it's time to get rid of them.

One year ago, Hank Gerbus had his hard drive replaced at a Best Buy store in Cincinnati. Six months ago, he received one of the most disturbing phone calls of his life.

"Mr. Gerbus," Gerbus recalls a stranger named Ed telling him. "I just bought your hard drive in Chicago."

Gerbus, a 77-year-old retiree, was alarmed. He knew the old hard drive was loaded with his personal information -- his Social Security number, account numbers and details of his retirement investments. But that's not all. The computer also included data on his wife, Gena, and their children and grandchildren, including some of their Social Security numbers.

Take the time to read the whole article - it might save you some trouble later on.

[K Frame]

In a few weeks I'm meeting up with friends in Pennsylvania, and I'm taking my old hard drive with me. It failed a couple of years ago and has been in my safe ever since.

I seriously doubt if the data will survive the .223 bullets I intend to drive through it.

I KNOW, however, that the remnants won't survive the fire into which I will put the remnants.

I think if I had a drive failure on a unit under warranty that it would get several dozen trips through a VERY powerful degaussing unit before it went in for service.

[matis]

I buy my hard drives when they go on deep discount sale.  Bought my last two, Maxtor 250 giggers from Circuit City for $59.95 each, after waiting for the rebates to come in.

So a repair shop getting my old drives is not an issue for me.


Today the drives usually come with a one year warranty and I've only once in 30 years had to use the warranty, anyway.


What I learned from this article, however, is this:

$59.95, $69.95, even $79.95 is cheap insurance to safeguard my data.  If my hard drive on warranty should go down, I'll TRASH it instead of sending it in for warranty repair.


Good article.


matis

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Encryption, anyone?

The bliss-ninny "nothing bad will ever happen to me" attitude is just as dangerous when it comes to computers and sensitive personal information.  If you don't take measures to protect yourself, chances are you'll get burned some day.

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

Encryption, anyone?

The bliss-ninny "nothing bad will ever happen to me" attitude is just as dangerous when it comes to computers and sensitive personal information.  If you don't take measures to protect yourself, chances are you'll get burned some day.

Yep. I encrypt the senstive stuff.  Old hard drives are kept in a small safe, until they can be properly destroyed, usually in a hail of gunfire.

[Nightfall]

Darik's Boot 'n' Nuke. When I wanna wipe a HD before trashing, selling, or storage, I mean really wipe the HD, this is what I use.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

[K Frame]

Encryption is the proper route, but unfortunately far too few people know about it. It's something that the big makers (Dell, etc.) should, as far as I'm concerned, be pushing as a "highly recommended" add on software package, but for some reason they don't.

And speaking of which, does anyone know anything about TrueCrypt? It's a shareware encryption program.

[Telperion]

There is already an immensely powerful magnet inside an HD, so thinking you can wipe a dead HD with one is misguided.  If you're going to shoot the thing, you might as well disassemble it and take the magnet out since it's fun to play with.

[K Frame]

"There is already an immensely powerful magnet inside an HD."

Now that I didn't know. I've got the hard drive to my old, dead XBox...

Time to pull out the screw drivers...

[Gewehr98]

There are hard drive degaussers out there.  I used one of the GSA-approved models on a regular basis in my last agency, so that there was no data on formerly classified computers when they're sold as surplus at DRMO.  The darned things are wicked, one must remove watches, wallets, billfolds, credit cards, etc. prior to entering the vicinity.  They hum and really rattle the bejeezus out of the hard drives that are strapped in.  

Otherwise, my method for removing data was pure kinetic energy, either by .45-70:



Or by .308 Winchester:



Or by 6.5-06 (moly and super velocity makes very clean holes!):



Or even .38 Special wadcutters: