Best way to "Make Safe" old computer

ErikD said:
Yeah, sorry Gollnick you are off base a bit here. The actual media inside a HD is about an 1/16" metallic plate. Think of basically a CD made out of some sort of metal and you get the idea, no knife will cut it easily.
Click to expand...
Many of them also have a VERY highly reflective surface. Excellent for shining the sun into people's eyes at long distance. ;)
 
downlaod a trial version of secure clean and use that to wipe the drive. of course, if the drive is a primary you will need to hook it into a different pc to delete. Or, you can direct it to only wipe the free space.

secure clean is a very interesting program. it will wipe whatever you specify according to DoD specs and you can also direct it to scan your free space for recoverable info. If anyone has the time and inclination it is an interesting exercise to see what "deleted" information can still be recovered off a platter with a shareware program freely downloaded off the internet.
 
The other option is to give the computer to someone you trust, like Vampire Gerbil. http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=336471

He'd never accidentally post your personal information on the forum... of couse not.


On second thought, with VG on his feet again, get the giant electromagnet, the shot gun, the D9 CAT, whatever it takes to reduce that drive to dust!

Seriously, if you've got an older PC that still works, VG is in need. It doesn't take a lot of PC to surf the web.
 
I was going to recommend explosives, but your way sounds easier. (but less fun)

Gollnick said:
It is not necessary to use shotguns, electromagnets, brandy, or anything exotic. Once you take the screws out of the hard-drive's outer shell, you'll find that the media itself is thin, flexible piece of brown/black plastic that can be cut to shreads with a knife in seconds. Once you cut it into a few pieces, it would take the NSA to put humpty back together again... and we're going to assume that the value of your information doesn't rise to that level.
Click to expand...
 
Gollnick said:
I may be remembering wrong. It's been a long time since I actually tore one apart myself. If it's a rigid disk, all the better. Just shatter it.
Click to expand...

They're an aluminum alloy, so they won't shatter like glass if you hit them. But they can be physically destroyed.

If you search the net for "DOD wipe" you'll find quite a few utilities that will overwrite your drive and then erase it. Multiple passes with different programs should assure even the most paranoid.
 
simple way. at best buy at the tech bench they drill holes in the hard drive. the platters won't spin correctly.

Pete
 
Geez, are you worried about keeping somebody from getting your credit card info, or the NSA from trying to decide if they need to arrest you?!?!? :eek:

"At best buy at the tech bench they drill holes in the hard drive. the platters won't spin correctly." This is a fast solution for them, and makes the customer happy, but not the best solution at all. Most of the data is still there and many good forensics labs could still salvage a lot of it . I worked briefly with a couple guys from Symantec about 11 years ago who were working on a project to capture good data of of physically damaged floppys and hard drives. We shot holes in a floppy disc with .38 wadcutters and they recovered the data with no trouble.

If you are worried about your personal info, download 'KillDisk', make the boot floppy and run that. It will write "01010" over then entire disk 8 times. if you are really paranoid reformat the disk and do that again. I know people through work that do criminal forensic computer investigation and have discussed this at length with them, and it takes an incredible amount of computing power to get data off the disk after a couple of low level formats.

If you are worried about NSA, then feel free to destroy your disk. Otherwise, it is just a waste of usable computer equipment that could be donated to a school if nothing else. Even though they are getting too slow for modern versions of Windows, Pentiums and Pentium IIs can make great linux boxes. You can download several Linux images (Damn Small Linux is my favorite, Puppy is ok too) that will run on a single CD rom and run those old machines on that.
 
Revolvergeek said:
"At best buy at the tech bench they drill holes in the hard drive. the platters won't spin correctly." This is a fast solution for them, and makes the customer happy, but not the best solution at all. Most of the data is still there and many good forensics labs could still salvage a lot of it .
Click to expand...

My guess is that there are only a few labs in the world that could salvage data from such a drive and then only at great effort and cost.

You have to ask yourself what you're trying to protect yourself against and what is reasonable economically.

Given what little I know about how Microsoft Windows and applications store information, I don't trust that there is any person out there much less a program that knows all of the places where there might be personal information stored on a hard disk that's been in use for years. There's all sorts of "temporary" files and hidden files and stuff that just accumulates and goes unaccounted for.

As I stated in a previous post in this thread, the cost of replacing a hard drive with a nice, brand new one is about $50. That's a small price to pay for the peace-of-mind of knowing that your personal data is not at risk. Given that the average incident of identity theft costs the victim about $4000 and hundreds of hour of time over several years, $50 is nothing.

Here's a better idea: Buy a new $50 hard drive for your old PC before donating it and then put the old drive in your new computer as a second drive. Now, all your old data are conveniently available on your new computer. Neat, eh? You save all the hassles of transfering, you now you didn't miss anything. A year from now, you're not gonna say, "Didn't I have that in a file..." and regret not saving the old drive. You can back up important files by saving them on both drives since the chance of both failing simultaneously is significantly smaller than that of either one failing. The ultimate recepient of your old computer gets a bigger drive and a brand new drive with zero-miles on it.

But, even if you decide to just spring for the new drive, $50, and destroy the old one, $50 and one minute on a drill press is all it takes to destroy your old data to the point that no casual ID thief will ever be able to access it again.
 
I have two tools I use to wipe drives before selling or giving away a PC, they are Autoclave and Boot & Nuke. Both are free and there are several commercial packages out there that do the same thing.

They basicly make passes over the drive writing 1s and 0s to the drive to obliterate the data on the disk. If you do 10 passes then there is hardly any chance anyone could recover data off it.


Autoclave: http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave-discontinued/

Boot & Nuke: http://dban.sourceforge.net/


Also, dont use any trial versions of commercial packages, they often do not make full passes and data may still be able to be recovered from the drives.


Now, if your drive has died and you can not boot up with a tool to wipe it due to a drive failure I would remove the drive, disassemble it and pull the platters out of the drive and bend them in half.

I have used my 1911 on bad drives and the several well placed rounds will pretty much mess up the platters so much that I dont think anyone will get data from them.
 
Johnclarke said:
I have used my 1911 on bad drives and the several well placed rounds will pretty much mess up the platters so much that I dont think anyone will get data from them.
Click to expand...

sounds like fun :p
 
Another program you can use is BCWipe.
It will overwrite once for handy deleting or you can use the US DoD standard 5200,28-std or even the Peter Gutmann 35 pass spec. If you like you can set your own level of rewrites and wipes 100 50000? whatever you like.It'll wipe unused space in swap files,MFT Records on NTFS file systems,generate random bytes to overwrite with or use cycled byte patterns. It's pretty secure, and if you like you can run one or two other wiper progs. as well to be sure to be sure!
 
I work on networks and servers for a living. I'm a network analyst. Been doing it for about 7 years now.

---------------------------

I recommend a piece of software called WipeDrive.

We use it at work to overwrite disks before get rid of the old computers. We get rid of computers sometimes 300 at a time.

I recently used this on my fathers computer before he gave it to someone.

Also, a lot of hard drive manufacturers offer "Zero Fill" utilites. This will fill the drive with Zero's. Sometimes it takes a while but it will also destroy the data.

Also, if any of you have any "computer" problems I'd be happy to try to help you via IM or email. Just let me know.

Cheers,
Fisher of Men
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top