YOUR HARD DRIVE

Did anybody view that news pgm about the recycled computers arriving in Africa.

You can buy a used hard drive for fifteen quid.

So this guy bought one and he had it examined opened whatever. Then he comes back to England pops into this guys house and told him where he banked and his account number etc. Apparently all your e mails are still on board.

He did say you need a secure deleting pgm which can be found on the net. Any tech types out there??? I am still a hammer and chisel type myself.

 

Best way to ensure your HD is clean is to burn/heat it as the material only maintains its magentic integrity (or whatever) up to about 120 Celsius.

 

try a program called kill disk. it can be found on www.killdisk.com it can be used as a fee program for the basic tools or buy it for a tenner for the full you carnt bend it program

 

The way a hard drive works, is that when you"delete" someting, it is only marked as deleted, and the space is re-usable. so you have to forceably re-write over the data. another program is evidence elliminator.

 

Ah ... you are talking about computers!

 

Errr no!? i wasn't me honest!

 

it has been suggested to me that people with *sensitive* material on their hard drive (i.e things they do not want the police to find) set up large electromagnetic coils inside their pc, when the po po bust down the door on a raid a switch can fry the pc

 

Didn't the use to do that to Minesweepers/Layers ?

 

Mac OS 10.3: Will do 7-Way Random Data Erases (MoD Standard for erasing Secret hard-disks)

Mac OS 10.4: Will do 35-way Random Data Erases - no-one will touch that data again!

Windows: Get a third party Application.

The Navy Way (iaw JSP440): One of the above or use a 'milling machine'(!)

Sorry for being a geek. I'm sure the Mob is at least somewhat at fault for that! ;-)

 

De-gaussing, I believe it was called. Used to de-magnetize ships hulls so they wouldn't attract magnetic mines.
It was done to a US Navy escort destroyer (USS Eldredge) in 1945, and was believed to be the source of the "Philadelpia Experiment" legend.

Sorry for the off-topic geekiness.

 

There is danger and risk with HDs and I found that by placing the HD in a caddy it can be removed prior to disposing of the PC. Also useful when I shut down too, I simply withdraw the caddies. I have a couple of systems and I connect whichever I want, just like two PCs I suppose. Anyway, the caddy is good as the HD is removable and portable, worth a think. BTW the caddies can be locked in place so they can't be nicked