I'm de-cluttering my life, and will be throwing out some old electronics: a broken LCD monitor, an old PDA, a couple of non-working hard drives and the like. So I have 2 questions:
I've heard that it's not good to just throw those things in the trash. Where's the best place to dispose of them?
What's the best way of making sure the hard drives and PDA are wiped or unreadable? I don't want some industrious person with better resources than me to get their hands on any personal information that might still be on them.
Many thanks.
Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
My town runs a "hazardous materials recycling" event every couple months. They accept all electronics, paint, unused medications, cleaning chemicals, and batteries. Call the clerk's office, they should be able to either tell you themselves or direct you to the right department.
As for hard drives, I've been told that the only way to make sure it's absolutely scrubbed is to buy software that will overwrite every byte on the drive with gibberish. Deleting files only makes those sectors available for rewriting, it doesn't actually eliminate the data until that space is required again. And hard drives are in shielded enclosures to protect them from magnetic fields.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Personally, I crack my old hard drives open and gouge the discs thoroughly with a screwdriver or something.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Hard drives have two really powerful magnets in them. We have a metal door and we use hard drive magnets to hold our keys and holiday decorations.
It takes less time to take out the magnet then it does to overwrite it 7 or 35 times (NSA or GUTMAN)--a nice safe number.
If you go the overwrite route, then most deletion programs have a "bleach" or "secure delete" feature that overwrites data when you erase it, giving you a choice of simple (1 pass), DOD (3 passes), NSA (7 passes) or Gutman (35 passes).
They should also have an option to "bleach" free space--parts of your hard drive that does not have any data.
EDIT:
Here are two programs I use or have used. Webroot gives you an ability to make a boot disk that you can use to erase a hard drive--handy if you are getting rid of the entire computer.
I know there are free programs out there that do the same thing, but I keep a back up of my iso I created. I no longer use Webroot, CCleaner works fine for me as I am not concerned about bleaching a current computer, but I do still have Webroot's boot disk I made for wiping friends' computers.
[ May 04, 2009, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: lem ]
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
Nice. I was heading to Best Buy anyway. That saves me a trip.
Thanks.
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
The problem with the hard drives is that they're not working any more. So I can't access them on my computer to erase them, but I don't know if someone with more resources than me would be able to get at it.
Also, the PDA probably still works, but I don't have the connector cables or the drivers installed on my computer to access it.
I'm pretty sure there's not any really sensitive information on the hard drives, although they've been laying around long enough that I'm not 100% certain. But I guess I can take my chances.
Posted by Speed (Member # 5162) on :
While we're on the subject, here's something I've always been idly curious about:
If you can retrieve data after they've been overwritten, say, 5 times, why hasn't anyone come up with a program that will let you use a 500GB hard drive to store 2500 GB of data?
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
quote: The problem with the hard drives is that they're not working any more. So I can't access them on my computer to erase them, but I don't know if someone with more resources than me would be able to get at it.
Taking out the magnets is so much more fun and you don't need power; you just need the right type of screw driver. The process pretty much destroys the hard drive.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
These types of discussions make me scratch my head a bit. I just see the odds being ridiculously small of someone:
1) digging through my trash 2) finding and taking my hard-drive 3) using elaborate means to pull data off of it 4) ? 5) profit
Have there been actual documented cases of someone doing this to someone else? If so, how many?
Who puts their bank account or SSN information on their hard drive? I've never had a reason to do so. I've entered my info into websites before, but I don't think my keystrokes persist anywhere on the drive.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Who puts their bank account or SSN information on their hard drive?
You don't use financial software?
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote:Originally posted by Speed: The problem with the hard drives is that they're not working any more. So I can't access them on my computer to erase them, but I don't know if someone with more resources than me would be able to get at it.
Also, the PDA probably still works, but I don't have the connector cables or the drivers installed on my computer to access it.
I'm pretty sure there's not any really sensitive information on the hard drives, although they've been laying around long enough that I'm not 100% certain. But I guess I can take my chances.
Hammer + nail = relatively secure hard drive destruction.
The platters are really pretty brittle once they've been cracked, so hammering a nail through the casing into the area where the platters are will shatter the drive into thousands of pieces. Sadly, this still isn't enough to meet DoD secure wipe requirements, but I say if someone is willing to dig through millimeter thick chunks of hard drive to get whatever they can, let em.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by Speed: While we're on the subject, here's something I've always been idly curious about:
If you can retrieve data after they've been overwritten, say, 5 times, why hasn't anyone come up with a program that will let you use a 500GB hard drive to store 2500 GB of data?
Because the retrieval is a bit uncertain and really, really slow, and it doesn't use the standard read-write head. If it takes hours on end to switch between your data sets, you might as well use a tape backup or something.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:You don't use financial software?
I don't. Maybe someday? I guess those that do have a much better reason to protect the data.
I still would think the odds rather small that someone would steal your data. Perhaps one out of every million discarded hard drives are stolen and data extracted and used nefariously? Maybe one out of ten million? Please correct me if I'm way off.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
quote: I still would think the odds rather small that someone would steal your data. Perhaps one out of every million discarded hard drives are stolen and data extracted and used nefariously?
I assume that if you are throwing away a hard drive or recycling it at a computer recycler where it will get melted then your chances of getting your stuff stolen/lifted are probably too small to loose sleep over.....unless you are a big business, government office, or employee.
However, if you are going to sell your computer on Ebay, give it to a friend or family, or put it up on Craigslist, I imagine your risk goes up significantly.
Best practice in the world of identity theft and dumpster divers is to at least do the DoD standard for wiping your drive 3 times with random characters. Seriously tho, if you are going to throw it away the magnets are really cool.
I had 2 sets of 10 I was playing with and they snapped together so hard it took a nice little tip of my skin off. The wow factor was worth the pain and blood.