The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: fightingquaker13 on November 24, 2010, 08:15:58 PM
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Here's the question. A friend has an old, but still ok laptop. He was going to give it to Goodwill. Then we started to wonder whether it was safe if you ever had stuff like credit cards, bank accounts etc. on it. Assuming you delete your history and passwords, can someone who trolls goodwills etc. for old machines still pull up your financial stuff to rip you off from the hard drive? Should you give an old one away, or treat it like a bank statement and shred it? (in this case involving getting to finally smash the thing ;D)?
FQ13
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Format would take care of all that.
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No, take the hard drive out of it, absolutely! They can still use the laptop but with a compatible hard drive re-installed.
Same thing with newer printers. They contain hard drives now as well, everything ever copied is stored and re-written over but it can never be permanently removed.
I don't trust reformatting the drive, personally.
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Format would take care of all that.
It would for a casual looker, but even after a deep reformat you can recover almost anything from an old drive if you have the right equipment.
Most banks require all computers to have the disk drives pulled and destroyed by a certified agent, and then recycle the rest. If there's any doubt as to what's on the drive, pull it and destroy it manually and recycle the carcass. Is it worth the small tax write-off to have your SSN floating around some more?
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I have my last two drives waiting for the campfire.
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It would for a casual looker, but even after a deep reformat you can recover almost anything from an old drive if you have the right equipment.
Most banks require all computers to have the disk drives pulled and destroyed by a certified agent, and then recycle the rest. If there's any doubt as to what's on the drive, pull it and destroy it manually and recycle the carcass. Is it worth the small tax write-off to have your SSN floating around some more?
Yes you can recover some bits and pieces, but not many people out there have the knowlegde and the gear to do that. I really doubt they would be the ones buying a used pc and a thrift store.
A better option is to donate them to a school group of some kind that will put them to good use.
PS if you have your SSN on your PC, you are asking for it to be stolen.
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Used my last desktop Dell to zero in my Sig556 scope,.....including the monster old school monitor.....
Wipe it, or trash it.
Otherwise, you can help out that fella in Africa that has millions waiting for your account #, to "help" him get his money in the states.
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there are hard drive 'shredders' that wright over data repeatedly to wipe it out, but, a friend had lost some wedding pics and had to try and recover them from a 'shredded' hard drive and we were still able to recover over 80% of the data that was on the drive. don't donate, take to the range and destroy it. (the hard drive anyway) .
deepwater
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Format the RAM and remove the hard drive.
Never donate, give away, throw away or recycle a hard drive!
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TAB, You and Tim are naive about this.
TAKE PATH'S ADVICE !!!Then wipe it with a LARGE magnet, like for picking up nails in the hardware store.
How do you think the Govt. recovers data from terrorists computers after they have been killed by a Predator strike as was reported several times in Iraq.
If the G can do it any talented hacker can do it, and people who engage in fraud can certainly afford a talented hacker.
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Well the most they would get out of my PC is a bunch of old invoices and a bunch of pics.
I have zero personal info on it and I never will. When I buy stuff online, I call the company, if I can't talk to a person, I don't buy.
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TAB, You and Tim are naive about this.
TAKE PATH'S ADVICE !!!Then wipe it with a LARGE magnet, like for picking up nails in the hardware store.
How do you think the Govt. recovers data from terrorists computers after they have been killed by a Predator strike as was reported several times in Iraq.
If the G can do it any talented hacker can do it,fifth grader can do it and people who engage in fraud can certainly afford a talented hackeran average fifth grader.
You were close, so I tweaked it ;D
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Well the most they would get out of my PC is a bunch of old invoices and a bunch of pics.
I have zero personal info on it and I never will. When I buy stuff online, I call the company, if I can't talk to a person, I don't buy.
In YOUR case the Pics would make it worth doing ;D
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In YOUR case the Pics would make it worth doing ;D
you could find more porn on the net in 5 seconds then is on this computer.
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Dude, Don't BS me, I've been seeing your avatars for almost 3 years now. ;D
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Our requirement is to overwrite the entire drive three times before they are declassified/removed. Basically it writes over ones and zeros three times to completely destroy all data on the drive. formatting will only remove data but won't do it completely. It's pretty easy to recover data if the drive is only formatted once.
BTW an 8G CF card takes about 20 min to declass so I could imagine a 100G drive taking FOREVER.
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I saw some guys on TV getting rid of computers and they drilled a few holes through the hard drive. I guess the disc inside it doesn't play when it's damaged.
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I've always pulled the HD and taken it apart. There are some very strong magnets in there that come in handy for all sorts of stuff. Once you have the actual disk in hand it is very easy to fold, spindle and mutilate it.
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I recycled one of my old pc's, try and recover data from this!
(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs314.snc4/41015_1568291452709_1398138947_31513246_6445153_n.jpg)
(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs435.snc4/47848_1568291972722_1398138947_31513252_1513178_n.jpg)
(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs208.ash2/47136_1568291772717_1398138947_31513249_7086020_n.jpg)
(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs428.snc4/47136_1568291692715_1398138947_31513247_3000002_n.jpg)
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It's not just computers. There was a show on last year about companies that take old copiers in trade for new ones. Most all of them have hard drives, and it was unbelievable what they were able to download from these traded in copiers. Most everything that was ever copied was able to be recovered and reprinted.
Don't buy into all of this, "Reformat with all zeros", stuff. There are many people in jail because police were able to recover damaging evidence from hard drives people thought were "erased". There is only one way to erase a hard drive, and that is on a sidewalk with a hammer, or else as sledgemeister has demonstrated. Bill T.
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TAB, You and Tim are naive about this.
You misread my post. I said NO, DO NOT RECYCLE the hard drive but remove and destroy it. You can still donate a laptop without the hardrive.
I also said I have two (2) hard drives ready to be incinerated. I have never NOT removed a drive from a computer.
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I meant that just burning, or blasting might not be enough to actually remove the data.
That was why I mentioned the stuff from Iraq. When they got one of Saddam's sons with a missile they had to identify him by DNA because he was just a smear, but they recovered his computers and presumably got info from them.
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Don't buy into all of this, "Reformat with all zeros", stuff.
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Good enough for the NSA, and they HATE having data available to others.
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If you really want to destroy a harddrive a strong magnetic field fallowed by Turnng it into small pieces is the best bet.
There is a local company that does it while you watch. THey run in thru a magnetic field, then thru a paper shreader on roids and then return the bits too you if you like.
I wonder what a microwave would do to it. it does cool things to cd/dvds ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu-oroNqAbs&feature=related ) I doubt it would destroy all the data, but its got to F things up royally and as a plus its "fun"
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7 pass zero of the drive is all that you would need to do
if you are still worried then burn the drive.
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Phil, that's what I used to do on my drive when deleting data no longer needed. I had a virus software package that had the same overwrite and encryption systems used by the DoD. I always settled for the 7-time pass due to time limits.
When the power supply finally went out I decided to just buy a new machine because the old one was over 5 years old and slow. I yanked the hard drive to keep and gave the chassis away.
IMHO, I wouldn't give away a machine with a hard drive still in it, just to be on the safe side. Too easy to pull them and keep or destroy it.