Data Still Left on Storage Devices for Sale

cluedweasel writes "According to a BBC story many people are still putting up their old PC's and storage devices for sale without taking basic precautions to ensure that confidential data is erased. The suggestion at the end of the story is to get a professional forensics firm to wipe your data or just destroy the item in question. With the low price of storage devices, the latter is probably preferable."

Comments

Not only good drive but also bad drives

[slashnutt]

I always hate having to send in my hard drive for warranty repair. Years ago, I watched a friend recover information from a newly arrived warranty repaired drive. If the drive is dead and has to be sent into for warranty service, make sure one of those super powerful magnets from another drives is put around all over the hard drive case. Don't, know if that will wipe anything but I don't expect the manufacturer to ensure my data is secure.

That said I used eraser every night.

Re:Not only good drive but also bad drives

[shotfeel]

It used to be different, but HDD technology is now right at the edge of what physics allows.

Not saying you're wrong, but I think an important qualifier might be "the edge of what physics allows" at any significant rotational speed. I have to wonder if you're willing to spend 100s of hours scanning a single platter with specialized equipment if you couldn't still make out a bit more. I really don't know, just wondering.

Re:Not only good drive but also bad drives

[kcbrown]

It USED to be true, with older drives, and it's just spooky-sounding enough to be intriguing, so people want to believe it.

Which goes to illustrate that technology, and thus what can and can't be done, changes over time.

And just because recover of modern drives that have been overwritten in a simple fashion cannot be done now doesn't imply that the same will be true in the future. That could easily change again, either because of changes to hard drive technology or because of improvements in recovery techniques.

So while it might be true *now* that a simple erase of the drive is sufficient, that only holds if you're concerned about a relatively small time window. Otherwise, you're safest in assuming that you have to take stronger measures.

And then there's always the possibility that the recovery techniques that are capable of working on today's hard drives are, if they exist at all, classified.

Re:Not only good drive but also bad drives

[Mycroft_VIII]

Unfortunately a few passes with random data is not as effective against a sophisticated recovery effort as is often assumed.
    Now if it's just some random joe with an undelete program he got for $19.99 at the local shop then a single pass is often enough, more sophisticated software only tools might get past a few, but with hardware equipment (probably not used often below the fbi/ pro foresnics places) you might want to do something a bit more secure.
    With good knowledge of how the data is actually stored on the disk you can figure out patterns that tend to degausse the bits being wiped and help eleminate the residual images left by the micro imperfection in head positioning (which are shrinking to almost nothing these days) and simular effects a trully sophisticated data recovery effort might use.
      Peter Gutman put out a paper about this that can be read at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_ del.html
that explains it better.
    Though with remapping and newer recording techniques things change and software only erasure becomes more and more problematic. At the highest levels of secrecy I believe most governments require over-kill levels of outright hardware destruction.

Mycroft

Most people don't know they can wipe the data

[WillAffleckUW]

And many don't have the tools - or if they have them, are unaware that the tools are capable of doing this.

I find a large sledgehammer used repeatedly does a fairly good job of handling data getting into the wrong hands, mind you ...

With Threads Like These...

[Shadow Wrought]

Invariably in discussions regarding data found on used hard drives there are a litany of stories about what people have found on drives they have bought. In almost every single instance of this there's a disclaimer at the end lines of, "but I deleted it of course." I wonder how many of them actually did. And, of those, if they deleted only the data, or the data and the programs?

I should also point out that I don't doubt any individual's account- I just don't know that I trust the whole population. Just a thought...

Re:USB keys

[pe1chl]

But does that destroy the data? Did you check that on anohter key?

Re:DBAN. Learn it, Live it, Love it.

[Vellmont]

DBAN doesn't -- last I checked -- have SCSI or RAID drivers, so it is only viable if you're on a plain vanilla IDE system. I dont' know about SATA.

According to the website, "DBAN has all available SCSI disk drivers". As of Dec 2004 DBAN has SATA drivers. I'd think RAID wiping should be done on each individual drive rather than across the entire RAID array.

Re:USB keys

[ipfwadm]

Ummm, for the price of a new USB key, why didn't you just smash the old one and buy a new one?

Is the potential loss (even if it is a very slight potential) of your company's trade secrets really worth $50?

apt-get wipe

[joeflies]

eom