Melville
Member
Registered: 4th Jun 03
Location: Newcastle upon Tyne
User status: Offline
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Read a fair bit on how people can get your details off an old HD as it doesnt properly delete the info and that there are some software programs out there that totally overwrites a HD with random binary.
Any know of any freeware ones out there?
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Brett
Premium Member
Registered: 16th Dec 02
Location: Manchester
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Paranoid people these days 
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Melville
Member
Registered: 4th Jun 03
Location: Newcastle upon Tyne
User status: Offline
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4790293.stm
Yes really paranoid 
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Brett
Premium Member
Registered: 16th Dec 02
Location: Manchester
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Melville
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4790293.stm
Yes really paranoid
yeah right. If you've got "that" much money worth stealing you could buy a new hard drive and not have to worry
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Melville
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Registered: 4th Jun 03
Location: Newcastle upon Tyne
User status: Offline
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So what would you do with the old one that you want no data of yours to be 
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Brett
Premium Member
Registered: 16th Dec 02
Location: Manchester
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Melville
So what would you do with the old one that you want no data of yours to be
Burn it?
Smash it with a hammer?
Give it some concrete shoes?
Tie a rope round it's little HD feet and sink it in the Med?
It's a fuckin news story about people who have given their machines to charity to give to Africans. Are you sending the HD to africa
If you put it in your bin do you think Joe Africa is gonna look through your bin outside your house hoping to find a HD?
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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tbh brett, no offence but you seem to have no clue about how easy it is to get data off of drives nor anything else (especially debit/credit cards, so easy to copy especially with places like maplins selling the gear ).
So its better to be safe than sorry and some people do actually use there pc's for work (storing data they wouldnt want to be recovered) and not just a portal to porn 
But Melville, http://www.killdisk.com/ they have a free version that will do what you want - try and do as many passes as possible though as that will decrease chances that people can get the data back 
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Brett
Premium Member
Registered: 16th Dec 02
Location: Manchester
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Dom
tbh brett, no offence but you seem to have no clue about how easy it is to get data off of drives nor anything else (especially debit/credit cards, so easy to copy especially with places like maplins selling the gear ).
Don't get me wrong. I understand it's easy to steal the data of a formatted drive. My point is, if you put a HDD in your dustbin do you think someone is gonna root through your bin, take the HDD, unformat it, then steal your identity? I'd sasy the odds are slim. But if you're that worried, Brand new HDDs are dirt cheap.
Sorry, I just think people give it a bit of overkill.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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thing is people do actually search bins, its how alot of data is stolen, plus it only takes a few hours to scrub your data....worth doing tbh
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Nismo
Member
Registered: 12th Sep 02
User status: Offline
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this is what you use
Data Destroy Hardware
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drax
Member
Registered: 5th Feb 05
Location: Sittingbourne, Kent
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Melville
So what would you do with the old one that you want no data of yours to be
Rub it with some magnets, put it ontop of some large speakers.. in the boot with my sub, then in the microwave 
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Ian
Site Administrator
Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
User status: Online
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I'm half with Brett here.
Its only a problem if someone else gets your hard drive, which if you're selling the computer you can remove. If you really want to supply them with a hard drive they're cheap anyway.
There's no substitute for smashing it up. If its over a few years old it needs replacing anyway. They don't last forever
[Edited on 15-08-2006 by Ian]
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
User status: Offline
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http://staff.washington.edu/jdlarios/autoclave/
Run that on the highest setting.
Even with electron scanning microscopes nobody is getting anything off it.
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