Posted: 12/12/2008 1:22:19 PM EDT
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Hey guys,
I have an older Dell computer I want to put on the EE for trade. Anyone know how I can make SURE all my info is properly deleted? If it matters it's a Dimension 8100. Thanks in advance! |
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hard drives are DIRT CHEAP... like under $40 for a low end one...
take the one you have in the machine out, wrap it in a garbage bag, take it to your driveway and hit it repeatedly with a hammer... then toss it... put the new drive in and you are good to go... if $40 is too much, go down your local computer store and ask them if they have any really really old used hard drives sitting around that you could buy for $10 |
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Quoted:
hard drives are DIRT CHEAP... like under $40 for a low end one... take the one you have in the machine out, wrap it in a garbage bag, take it to your driveway and hit it repeatedly with a hammer... then toss it... put the new drive in and you are good to go... if $40 is too much, go down your local computer store and ask them if they have any really really old used hard drives sitting around that you could buy for $10 This is the best way to go for 100%. Now if you didn't use that PC for banking or nor does it have personal info, then I would go with the boot and nuke. then use the restore CD to Restore the PC. Please Note! Some PC did not come with a Restore CD, but a kept it on the drive, if you use nuke and boot you may delete the partition. In that case you may need to get with dell to send you a restore CD at a price. |
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The boot and nuke will be more than sufficient. What it would cost to get *any* data off of that machine after a DoD wipe would infinitely outweigh the return, even if they were to hit the eternal data recovery jackpot and manage to get *something* intelligible at all off of it.
Basically, if you do a DoD wipe with the DBAN disk, it would cost untold thousands of dollars for a professional data recovery company to even get anything off of it again, and that's just something, not even something useful. There's a reason it's the government standard, and it's not because any old armchair commando on the EE can recover the data. DBAN it using the DoD wipe with at least 3 passes, and everything on that drive will go to personal-data heaven forever. You can sleep easy knowing it is completely irreversible, and FREE. ETA: The process takes a LONG time, especially with a large drive, so you might want to kick it off and run it overnight. |
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swap out hard drives. no matter what you do, the data can always be recovered from your harddrive by some1 with the proper knowledge/equipment.
if you want to destroy the data irrevocably, smash the disc with a hammer and then burn the smashed pieces in a hot fire till it doesn't resembles a hard drive or pieces of one. nuke and boot will prevent most anyone from retrieving data aside from leet (elite) hackers and law enforcement |
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I still stand by my opinion that destroying and replacing the drive is extreme and unnecessary - this is from a NCSU CS guy that works for the largest network storage company in the world (If there's one thing I know, it's data storage and hard drives). I'm personally quite familiar with data recovery and you can be rest assured that what I suggested is perfectly secure. Like I said, it's the US government's standard for a reason.
If you do decide to replace it though, try looking on your local Craigslist for a drive, they're usually not too bad. If you have any questions, drop me a IM. I'm in Raleigh, so I can't meet you in person, but I can definitely answer any questions and/or walk you through it over the phone. |
Thanks for your help! The problem I had is my floppy drive won't format a floppy, so I can't download Dereks BnN. I might need professional help on this one
Quoted:
I still stand by my opinion that destroying and replacing the drive is extreme and unnecessary - this is from a NCSU CS guy that works for the largest network storage company in the world (If there's one thing I know, it's data storage and hard drives). I'm personally quite familiar with data recovery and you can be rest assured that what I suggested is perfectly secure. Like I said, it's the US government's standard for a reason. If you do decide to replace it though, try looking on your local Craigslist for a drive, they're usually not too bad. If you have any questions, drop me a IM. I'm in Raleigh, so I can't meet you in person, but I can definitely answer any questions and/or walk you through it over the phone. |
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Quoted:
Thanks for your help! The problem I had is my floppy drive won't format a floppy, so I can't download Dereks BnN. I might need professional help on this one
Quoted:
I still stand by my opinion that destroying and replacing the drive is extreme and unnecessary - this is from a NCSU CS guy that works for the largest network storage company in the world (If there's one thing I know, it's data storage and hard drives). I'm personally quite familiar with data recovery and you can be rest assured that what I suggested is perfectly secure. Like I said, it's the US government's standard for a reason. If you do decide to replace it though, try looking on your local Craigslist for a drive, they're usually not too bad. If you have any questions, drop me a IM. I'm in Raleigh, so I can't meet you in person, but I can definitely answer any questions and/or walk you through it over the phone. SigFan, IM me with your phone and I can get you a fromatted hard drive from my basement parts bins. I may charge you a PMag that's all. I am sure I will have a small one that will work fine. M-Forgery |
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I still stand by my opinion that destroying and replacing the drive is extreme and unnecessary - this is from a NCSU CS guy that works for the largest network storage company in the world (If there's one thing I know, it's data storage and hard drives). I'm personally quite familiar with data recovery and you can be rest assured that what I suggested is perfectly secure. Like I said, it's the US government's standard for a reason. If you do decide to replace it though, try looking on your local Craigslist for a drive, they're usually not too bad. If you have any questions, drop me a IM. I'm in Raleigh, so I can't meet you in person, but I can definitely answer any questions and/or walk you through it over the phone. im an IT guy that at the current moment is sitting within 50 feet of about 2000 hard drives and a total disc space of well over 1000Tb... i cant agree with ya more on your response. we physically destroy our drives here at work, but the info we have on them is quite sensitive... the stuff on your home machine, not so much. |
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I still stand by my opinion that destroying and replacing the drive is extreme and unnecessary - this is from a NCSU CS guy that works for the largest network storage company in the world (If there's one thing I know, it's data storage and hard drives). I'm personally quite familiar with data recovery and you can be rest assured that what I suggested is perfectly secure. Like I said, it's the US government's standard for a reason. If you do decide to replace it though, try looking on your local Craigslist for a drive, they're usually not too bad. If you have any questions, drop me a IM. I'm in Raleigh, so I can't meet you in person, but I can definitely answer any questions and/or walk you through it over the phone. im an IT guy that at the current moment is sitting within 50 feet of about 2000 hard drives and a total disc space of well over 1000Tb... i cant agree with ya more on your response. we physically destroy our drives here at work, but the info we have on them is quite sensitive... the stuff on your home machine, not so much. Spent an internship a couple years ago working for Cisco, in the .gov services group. They did special contract work for NSA, DoD, etc. Because some of the stuff on our storage systems was ITAR-restricted or top-secret/classified-type stuff, they had this really expensive machine that would pop a few thousand joules through a drive, irreversibly destroying anything electromagnetic inside. I got to run it a couple times before we sent failed drives back to the vendors. 
Pretty sweet technology. I had one that I had already zapped, and was getting the return auth to send it back. The CS guy on the phone was like "Are you sure it's really faulted?" I told him, "yes", and he wanted to know what tests I had run on it and started asking me how I had run them and all this stuff. I just told him that I was "absolutely sure it was dead. It's not coming back either, trust me." |
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Get BCWipe:
HERE This is a program I have used in conjunction with the SBI and local law enforcement. It was the standard for NC SBI for years. Hope this helps! |
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Get BCWipe: HERE This is a program I have used in conjunction with the SBI and local law enforcement. It was the standard for NC SBI for years. Hope this helps! DBAN is totally open source and free, and uses the same algorithms (Gutmann/DoD) as BCWipe. Might want to give it a try sometime if you're looking for an equivalent free solution, especially for small one-off jobs like this. |
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As a techie who does security software for a major company here in RTP, I'll second the reconmendation for DBAN. It'll run for hours but nobody will get anything off your drive.
If you can burn a CD, from an image/iso, you know enough to run it. Happy to help but I'm in Cary/RTP. +1 DBAN |
