Consumer Reports: Wiping your old electronics clean

Local abc ^ | 12-24-2013 | Alicia Vitarelli

[Taffini]

bump

[PAR35]

I suspect that both the ipod and windows methods described are NSA approved.

[roadcat]

A few years ago a new brother-in-law (a worthless POS who married my wife's sister) asked a favor of me, wanting me to repair a laptop computer that he wanted to give to his wife. Windows OS busted, DVD drive problems, hard drive problems. The hard drive was clearly failing, but with some utilities and know-how I managed to recover the data via another computer.

The idiot had deleted many files, but they truly aren't gone unless you do a wipe. I found and recovered numerous picture files of him with previous women. Apparently, the laptop had belonged to his previous girlfriend. Never told my wife's sister, but she's no angel and those two deserved each other!

Hard drives are cheap, so bust up and burn the old one when giving up a computer (or giving it to a new girlfriend).

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[snowtigger]

Can a guy clean hard drives with a strong magnet?

[DB]

Not normally.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

Redhawk 44 Magnum. Nothing left worth anything. My favorite means of disposal.

[DB]

Remember that when you restore the OS to factory, your files aren’t really gone and you have to do all the OS updates that have accumulated over the years all over again... Not safe and will consume a lot of time...

Hard drives are cheap. Destroy them.

[octex]

I’m an oldster. I know little about the internal workings of a CPU. I have several towers from previous desktops dating back to my first one in 1997.

I’m in favor of destroying the hard drives on them all before turning them in for recycling or just setting them at the curb for others to pick up.

I have no idea what a hard drive looks like. How can I i.d. the hard drive in order to remove and destroy? A pic would be helpful. .........Thanks for any advice.

[Fire_on_High]

Most of the time there’s nothing worth all that hassle. Admittedly, I have a large stash of old HDD’s I’ve never gotten rid of, but it’s not out of fear/paranoia...more a knowledge that even a drive in somewhat iffy condition may save my ass eventually if the current one dies with no warning.

[pa_dweller]

pix

drives

The older ones (PATA) will have a connector similar to one pictured here

connector

newer drives will have a SATA connector like the red one on the right in the link above

[Sir Napsalot]

OK, thanks. Good to know.

[Slump Tester]

You really think someone is going to go to that much bother?

While everyone is worrying about what's on an old hard drive, all your personal info is already floating around in places where you have no control over it at all.

Store and restaurant records, Somali cleaning crews at bank headquarters (and losers on work-release programs), the government, credit card companies who are always being attacked by hackers, etc...

I just don't see anyone going to that much work to recover info after a drive has been re-partitioned. There are easier ways to get it if they want it that bad.

[Slump Tester]

"You’re assuming the old drives have value."

They do if you want that old PC to be worth anything at all! Especially if it's a few years old. Priced any IDE drives latley?

I buy stuff on ebay all the time, and the systems that don't have a drive and an OS don't sell for squat. No one wants them but idiots.

[Peet]

Remove hard disk and roast on open flame bbq one hour.

---

*smile*

I would (1) low-level format, (2) write zeros TK00 to TKnn, (3) write ones TK00 to TKnn, (4)low-level format, (5) hit with hammer (*that* was satisfying), and (6)throw in dumpster.

BOFH

:wq

[SueRae]

Great tip! If I ever get a car with built in nav, i’ll make sure this is done. Thanks.

[Venturer]

When I get rid of a PC , I take out the hard drive and smash it.

IMO nothing is ever really deleted.

[Seattle Conservative]

Bookmark

[markomalley]

First of all, I am not one to give away or sell perfectly good computers. I generally use them until they are dead.

Having said that, when I do eventually donate them to Salvation Army, Goodwill, or the like, I always yank the hard drives. I get the tax deduction for the computer whether it's got a hard drive or not, so why give away the hard drive.

As for the hard drives themselves, I would suggest that your course of action depends upon the value of the data stored on the drive. Yes, somebody can do forensics to recover data that has been deleted (there is a whole discipline on remenance security), but you have to ask the question: is somebody actually going to spend the time and effort to recover magnetic shadows on your drive?

For most anything that any of us do, just using a DOD-compliant wipe software will do the trick.

OTOH, if there is something on your hard drive that must absolutely, positively, 150% NEVER be seen by anybody (like something that would put you in jail for a long, long time if somebody was to see it), then you need to make the hard drive unrecoverable:

• Disassemble the hard drive
• Lay each one of the platters out
• Take a degaussing wand and thoroughly go over the surface of each platter.
• Break each platter up into pieces -- the smaller the better -- and throw the pieces away in different garbage cans in different locations...

Somebody jokes about taking a shotgun to the hard drive...well, the magnetic images will still remain, even though the hard drive is no longer usable and those magnetic images could still be recovered.

[trebb]

Hammer followed by flames - the only way to have true Remanence security.