I just sold an old laptop computer for parts. I kept the hard drive. I'm still nervous about someone accessing my credit and/or banking information from it. If I kept the hard drive, then I'm covered, right?
I just sold an old laptop computer for parts. I kept the hard drive. I'm still nervous about someone accessing my credit and/or banking information from it. If I kept the hard drive, then I'm covered, right?
If you really want to make sure: Shotgun. 
But you should be covered if you took the hard drive out.
Yes, you should be OK. Unless you left a CD with all your online banking info in the CD drive.
If you want, thermite the hard drive. Its the only way to be sure.
have an acetylene torch and a 1" drill bit?
I put the hard drives in my HF metal cutting band saw. I think the NSA could still read the disks, but short of them, I'm OK. And the NSA has my drives backed up anyway, so big deal.
They're not getting anything off it if you kept the hard drive -- at least, not unless it had another drive or an SSD that you left in there.
The way I see it, there are three levels of paranoia here:
1) if you're a regular guy and you want to stop a criminal from stealing the credit card numbers off your hard drive, you do a data wipe (note, this does not work for SSDs).
2) if you're a mob boss and you want to stop the FBI from getting evidence of your numbers racket, drill a few holes through the platters
3) if you're the CIA and you want to stop the Russians from getting your list of spies, THEN you need thermite.
In reply to Grtechguy:
I'm planning to do that when I go into the shop tomorrow 
You're covered. Memory dumps at shutdown. HD is the only thing that stores info.
If the HD is still good and of reasonable size you can by a pretty cheap enclosure for it and use it for storage / backup. That is what I did with my old PS3 drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182145
There are SATA versions also of course.
Nobody has mentioned this yet, but contrary to popular belief; formatting your hard drive deletes nothing.. Everything is still there, a simple file recovery program will bring it all back. I have tenant bank information on my computer hard drive. When I get a new computer. I perform a proper drive wipe, then physically destroy the drive.... First Sledgehammer, then bonfire!!
Too bad most major corporations/governments don't do this.
EDIT*** I forgot about this, most printers have memory that can be recovered. If you are getting rid of a printer, DESTROY IT!! Especially if you print off statements on it.
...drive wipes are performed by running a disk utility that writes zeros to all of the hard disk sectors. many hard disk manufacturers offer these in their free in their disk utilities software suites.
nderwater wrote: ...drive wipes are performed by running a disk utility that writes zeros to all of the hard disk sectors. many hard disk manufacturers offer these in their free in their disk utilities software suites.
Zeroing will only stop semi determined people, writing garbage over it a few times will stop everybody but the realllllly determined feds, melting it will actually destroy the data. Its also fun to melt stuff.
I will say this, my office (Medical) has our old drives shredded. yes, shredded.
From what I understand, the NSA shreds, melts, and stores all of their old data storage devices in a secure facility.
When I worked at the computer shop years ago, we would have to shred drives sometimes. Pretty much all of the law firms, medical facilities, and guys with too many MREs required it when we replaced their dead drives.
drsmooth wrote: EDIT*** I forgot about this, most printers have memory that can be recovered. If you are getting rid of a printer, DESTROY IT!! Especially if you print off statements on it.
I always destroy my printers. It's the only time I get to listen to Die Motherberkeleyer Die at home. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQvr-bbOow8
drsmooth wrote: Too bad most major corporations/governments don't do this.
Then there's the story of a certain three-letter company that produced business machines, based in Atlanta, that needed a way of permanently destroying hard drives.
Carload after carload of execs would go to a firing range where they'd rent automatic weapons...
nderwater wrote: ...drive wipes are performed by running a disk utility that writes zeros to all of the hard disk sectors. many hard disk manufacturers offer these in their free in their disk utilities software suites.
Mmm, maybe. But if a sector is X wide and the head is X-Y wide, then there's a good chance that the Y-width area still has the old data on it, and there are ways of recovering it.
There are even ways of recovering data from RAM. I don't know the details (for some reason, people don't like to talk about it 
) but RAM isn't 100% volatile and if someone wants it badly enough, they'll get it.
Are these methods likely for some schmoe who bought a laptop with Malicious Intent? Nope.
Kenny_McCormic wrote:nderwater wrote: ...drive wipes are performed by running a disk utility that writes zeros to all of the hard disk sectors. many hard disk manufacturers offer these in their free in their disk utilities software suites.Zeroing will only stop semi determined people, writing garbage over it a few times will stop everybody but the realllllly determined feds, melting it will actually destroy the data. Its also fun to melt stuff.
With remotely modern-ish hard drives a single overwrite with ANYTHING is enough to stop anybody, including the realllly determined feds, unless the drive is an SSD or hybrid. Physical destruction is ridiculous overkill.
The idea that data can be recovered after one or two overwrites comes from 80s and earlier drives where that was actually possible.
'secure' merely means 'too cost prohibitive to continue.' if you dont have the ability to chemically destroy a drive, then you can essentially stop everyone in their tracks, afaik, if you remove the logic board from the drive.
if you take the mini motherboard off the hard drive, then there is no logical mapping information about the header/cylinder positions. Even on 'identical' model number hard drives, these logic boards can go thru dozens of revisions, so these parts are not interchangeable directly. and even the same logic boards have on-board ROMS which likely have unique info in them from the factory, and this can be a run of only 1000 drives that have that particular ROM's image.
GameboyRMH wrote: Physical destruction is ridiculous overkill.
Yeah, but it is also the easiest. Got a sledgehammer/drill/vice/ax? Got a fire/blowtorch? Done. Plus you got to destroy something.
madmallard wrote: 'secure' merely means 'too cost prohibitive to continue.' if you dont have the ability to chemically destroy a drive, then you can essentially stop everyone in their tracks, afaik, if you remove the logic board from the drive. if you take the mini motherboard off the hard drive, then there is no logical mapping information about the header/cylinder positions. Even on 'identical' model number hard drives, these logic boards can go thru dozens of revisions, so these parts are not interchangeable directly. and even the same logic boards have on-board ROMS which likely have unique info in them from the factory, and this can be a run of only 1000 drives that have that particular ROM's image.
Data recovery companies which average joes can afford to hire keep a library of these boards. So removing the logic board wouldn't stop a soccer mom with a few hundred dollars.
the last 3 times i attempted a data recovery, they couldn't source the board.
and if they could, thats not a few hundred dollar job, 2 differently places start at $800.
and again, thats presuming the code in the ROM is the same, they may have changed it from one board to the next with specific geometry instructions.
but the most important part is, you have to -know- what board to be looking for. They don't mark the drive case with what board version was used. so if you take that off....
The best part about a dead HD is the strong magnets inside. I just used one to fish out a socket that I dropped into the engine bay of a car.
Wally wrote:drsmooth wrote: EDIT*** I forgot about this, most printers have memory that can be recovered. If you are getting rid of a printer, DESTROY IT!! Especially if you print off statements on it.I always destroy my printers. It's the only time I get to listen to Die Motherberkeleyer Die at home. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQvr-bbOow8
It's funny how the younger generation assumes it is a CD.. Move ahead to 1:20 to see what is relevant to this post. Family guy:bird is the word CD is destroyed
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