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Always Format your drives, Devices or computers

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jrgarrett
Sophomore

Always Format your drives, Devices or computers

47 REPLIES 47
jrgarrett
Sophomore

I too have a few PATA drives that have outlasted many of my SATA drives.. It is like the quality just isn't there anymore.   Although programming while drinking leads to WTF was I doing last night! in the morning Lol!
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

Like mentioned by a few, writing zeroes and ones or using some wiping program is critical when HDDs are going to change hands.  Formatting doesn't really erase the data. 

With that said, this was a good and informative topic to address and may keep someone out of a mess of trouble. 

C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

I hope you guys understand that those wipe programs hardly work, I can recover back about 4-5 basic wipes worth of data, can usually recover single pass DoD wipes as well.

Also, if you are using an SSD, or Flash based storage, don't bother wiping, even a secure erase doesn't remove what was stored.  Just makes it impossible for the average joe to recover said data.

The best security is this, done with the device?  Destroy the storage on it, physically.
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

I've done that to a few.  A nice chisel and hand sledge work VERY well. 

If I'm going to toss them, that's the method I use.

Gwalk900
Honorary Alumnus

I usually do the 10 pass on the drives I feel must be wiped and a hammer on those I consider "critical:.


BirdDog
Assistant Professor

Then there is this:

Gwalk900
Honorary Alumnus

That has got to make a noise !


jrgarrett
Sophomore

CRUNCH! LOL
C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor
C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

It's funny, because I have a friend that works at a farm equipment manufacture as an IT Admin Assistant.  He has shown me pictures of the firing range that they have for destroying disks, rather comical seeing someone take a shotgun and continuously fire at a disk, then run a big electro magnet over them.
jrgarrett
Sophomore

No way of recovering from that!!. Lol
jrgarrett
Sophomore

Yeah that would take a few days! lol
Gwalk900
Honorary Alumnus

There IS this option but it too takes several passes to be effective:


Pawnee County
New Member

I have done that with a Cat D-7 but it was Pickup Trucks not motorcycles.  Squished about six of them at one time back in the eighties when I worked as a Construction Mechanic. 
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

Your smallest HDD is 4TB?  Wow.  I've got an old 40GB laying in a box if you want it.  It's IDE, but that doesn't matter.  Just cram that cable in there and use some electrical tape!  LOL. 
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

Corrosive,

I thought about using my old drives for targets, too.  They'd be great for a 200yd target for a .223  I already had fun with my original Hughesnet dish and my shotgun.  LOL.  That made a mess to clean up, though.   

C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

Yeup, HDD for my mass storage, and SSD for anything lower than 4TB... I generally run into one of two situations...  Personal rig that needs no more than 512GB of storage, or server that needs massive amounts of storage.

EDIT: Also, a little over 6 days to do 2 DoD passes on my 4TB disk.
Pawnee County
New Member

I whaped my old Dish Network Dish with my 12ga Springfield and a 3 inch Magnum #3 steel shock.  Glad it only took 1 shot that thing like to tore my shoulder off.  Never gonna use a 3 inch Magnum again in a pump.
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

Corrosive,

I've often thought about that (using the .22LR), but was always a little worried about what the main part of the body of an HDD is made of.  Cast aluminum?  I was just concerned with ricochet.  I have some old 42gr round nose which might actually be perfect for that. 


Gary,

Eek!  I've got a bad back as it is.  I can't imagine what those 12ga magnums feel like.  The regular 12ga shell is about all I want to handle, and even then, four or five shots and my shoulder and back are spent.  I bet that sucker made a nice mess of that dish, though.  LOL.  

GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

Corrosive,

I think you previously mentioned that you had servers. I had forgotten about that, but with a server, or servers, I can definitely see a high capacity HDD like that being necessary.  For me, if it's not mainly for storage, I go with the SSD, too.  Each of my three PCs have Samsung EVO 250GB SSDs.  My desktop also has a 500GB HDD in it for storage, and I have the 750GB external USB drive for the backups.  I actually still have the original 500GB Laptop HDDs that came in my laptop and notebook, but they just sit there with the original W8 they had on them before I replaced them.  I have four 16GB flash drives for transferring files between computers, too, although one has the Windows 10 upgrade files on it.   

Thirty days to wipe one of those disks...sheesh!