Wipe those hard drives well - a cautionary tale.

[Pab Sungenis]

A friend of mine recently bought a hard drive second-hand. Just for fun, he wanted to see what data he could recover on it, even though it had been "wiped" and a new OS installed on it.

Here's what he has found in the past three days:

I have his full résumé with the usual amount of personal info.

I know his taste in movies. I know where he goes to see them and I know how he downloads the ones he liberates.

I know his vile tastes in music. I know where he downloads it from.

I can assure you he hasn't paid for ANY of the software he used. I know what he's pirating and I know where he downloads that from, too.

I've seen his taste in smut, and know where he goes for that. He also has a penchant for online poker (two different sites) and for major league baseball.

I have pictures of some of his friends now.

I can tell you how many viruses he had (he didn't bother to pirate good A/V software).

I know he has played at least one of Sony's DRM -addled CDs.

I know the name of his PC, what his username was, and shortly I'll know his password as well.

If he stored any passwords in IE I'll know them shortly, too.

I know what brand/model of router he has, know what firmware version is on it, and what ports have been opened for what services.

I know everything he has bought and sold via eBay, Craigslist and some other places as well in the last year or so.

I know his nick on a bunch of forums.

I know his MySpace page.

I know who he chats with over HotMail, and whom in particular he is VERY friendly with.

Now bear in mind, this is from a hard drive that was repartitioned and had a new OS installed!

The moral of the story is, dispose of hard drives properly, and only after wiping them to NSA standards.

[JerseygirlCT]

1. Serious question then

How do you do that?

[Pab Sungenis]

3. PGP, Crap Cleaner, a number of other utilities are out there.

Or if you're throwing it out, you could just completely degauss the platters with a bulk tape eraser.

[VOX]

28. Thanks. n/t

[EnviroBat]

37. If a drive goes bad, take the loss...

Hopefully you have everything backed up, but I wouldn't recommend sending it off to be replaced, even for warranty stuff if you have anything personal on there. They are getting cheap now, so just simply replacing it is a safe option.

[Gabi Hayes]

4. call me

[Liberal Veteran]

5. The best way is to use a program to write over the entire drive...

...at least 5 times. I imagine with sophisticated techniques that the average computer geek doesn't have, one could still retrieve some info from a drive that has been written over completely several times, but unless you expect the FBI or CIA to get ahold of your drive, it's unlikely to ever happen.

[wakeme2008]

11. That is soooo 80s .... Once is more than enough

today... :)

[EnviroBat]

39. Nope...

My friend runs a computer forensic company. The standard is 7 times...

[GoneOffShore]

8. Depends on the OS

On Mac you use Disk Utility to erase the drive, then do it again, then do it again. Or get Norton Utilities and erase to NSA standards, but do it twice, because you're a paranoid, like me.

[JerseygirlCT]

10. Hmmm... my old drive just completely died on me

So I'm not sure how to get things working in order to erase it...

Not that there's much there that would be terribly interesting, but it still skeeves me a bit.

[Liberal Veteran]

13. Open it up with a wrench and take a hammer to the platters.

Or make something interesting out of them....they are shiny.

[n2doc]

21. Did the same

I showed my kids what a hard drive looked like and how it operated. Great fun!

[JerseygirlCT]

35. LOL!! Now why didn't I think of that! nt

[mtnester]

43. Bolt cutters work well too

cut the thing into pieces, throw them away on separate trash days.

Otherwise, plenty of software out there to scrub a disk, just make sure they exceed the US Department of Defense standards for file secure erasure (DoD 5220.22)

[Tesha]

44. MacOS can do it automatically.

(I can't recall if it's the default when erasing a drive or
an optional extra.)

Tesha

[wakeme2008]

15. best I have found and FREE

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php

Called Eraser... :)

[JerseygirlCT]

36. Thanks to you -- and to all who responded! nt

[Tesha]

41. A 1/2" drill-bit through the platters works wonders. (NT)

A belt sander or grinding wheel does a pretty good job as well.

Of course, you can't sell the drive on Ebay after that. ;)

Tesha

[tuvor]

2. And, on a related note, secure your wireless routers.

I've just discovered that I can access some neighbour's computer's Shared Files on my wi-fi enabled Palm.

[Liberal Veteran]

9. That's why I don't do wireless at all.

I could secure it, but a halfway decent hacker could still get into my peer-to-peer via wireless setup within minutes, whereas getting through my hardware firewall to my networked linked with Cat5 would be a much bigger challenge.

[EFerrari]

6. Omg. My weight is all over the net.

:rofl:

[bridgit]

7. pft, hear you talking but then that's nothing, you have to watch...

wherever that things goes; our HD froze, but we still had the machine under a tech warranty...guy comes by, changes out frozen HD, gets the new one in, screen comes up, all is good...but then hubby seen him putting the old one into the new one's box, "what are you doing?" "it's part of the service that the replaced HD goes back with me to the shop." "not today it isn't" informed hubby

sure we had passwords on there, plus every personal & professional contact x( taint funny mcgee, twern't going to happen neither

[sweetheart]

12. your wallet on acid

After the wars on lanka, Hanuman was handed a jewelled bracelet of unimaginable worth,
and he tore it apart jewel by jewel, finding nowhere in it any hint of 'Rama'.

[seriousstan]

14. You must physically destroy the disks. I would suggest multiple drill holes

Then taking a rather large rock to them.

[wakeme2008]

16. And just think about all those nudie pictures ppl take with their digital

camera and 13yo Computer Geek will like when you donate your machine to him...... :rofl:

[EnviroBat]

40. guilty as charged...

Intimate home movies as well... I'm a bad, bad, man...

[razors edge]

17. I overwrite with a 8lb sledghammer,

is that good nuff?:evilgrin:

[Liberal Veteran]

18. I never get rid of a working hard drive.

I've had exactly ONE hard drive die on me in the last 15 years and that one I ended up taking apart and seeing what all the neat magic stuff was inside it.

[razors edge]

19. I've only killed one.

too many hours surffing at work (mostly here) and didn't want to have to keep track of where it ended up.

[Liberal Veteran]

20. Exactly...I still have my first 80 MB hard drive....

...that cost me almost 400 dollars when I bought it.

[razors edge]

22. damn thats alot

I built this rig from MB up.

3.2 gig pentium

pentium MB 64bit

2 gig ram

add ons galore for about 700, took me a while as it was my first, but works slick.

[Liberal Veteran]

23. 15 years ago, a meg of hard drive space averaged about 7 dollars.

Hard drives and ram were outrageously expensive and one could easily spend a 100 dollar for a 2 meg chip.

My last computer cost me less than my first hard drive cost.

[razors edge]

24. yep, got a 1 gig USB drive for $75

more drive than my first two computers, great to copy crooks and liars, and then show friends at work.

[Pab Sungenis]

30. My first hard drive was $250.00 for 10 MEGS.

And THAT didn't include the SCSI controller or adapter for my Atari XE.

[razors edge]

34. OK you guys forced me to.

my first computer was a radio shack 100 in one kit with an integrated circuit, rows of resistors, capacitors mounted on cardboard with springs you bent over to insert pre-soldered wires of various lengths.

It had a speaker, a solar cell, and a varistor, of the highest quality available.

with it I built an am/fm reciever-transmitter and I, not al gore invented the internets.

:evilgrin:

[kohodog]

25. drilling it works too.

[truebrit71]

38. Funnily enough, that was my preferred method when over-writing my last HD.

...seemed to work a treat...

[Zorra]

26. Heh. Anybody that spent time snooping my hard drive would

be grasping at smoke.

[raysr]

27. Here's another free one to DOD specs

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

[The Anti-Neo Con]

29. How about this method of destruction...

the best way to destroy a hard drive is to watch the ending of the movie Terminator 2 Judgement Day and learn.

[hlthe2b]

31. I was told that nothing short of HCL acid to the hard drive...

would truly render it "safely" disposed of.... That actually was going to be my plan, but then I have to dispose of the acid....:shrug:

[raysr]

32. Throw it in the sea

saltwater will take care of anything.

[NNN0LHI]

33. I have had only one HD that was in my 9 year old machine that was replaced

I had everything on there. Nine years of my passwords and financial info. I took it to the welder in town and had it melted down into a grease spot. I hope that "cleaned" it up OK.

Don

[originalpckelly]

42. Personally I go on smash fest...

it is quite fun, did you know that HDs are vacuum sealed?

[Tesha]

45. No, and they aren't.

They'll actually work quite well (for a while)
with the covers off. (Eventually, dust will kill
them.)

Tesha