- Saturday, 4 July 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors
Hold on to your hammers
IN RESPONSE to the Which? Computing advice given on smashing up your hard drive with a hammer in order to protect data, data security firm Acronis says this is nothing but a rash and thoughtless action.
General manager Kevin Moreau says that doing this is not only expensive but also environmentally damaging and completely unnecessary.
According to Acronis, taking a hammer to your hard drive is completely ridiculous, as it believes this advice completely glosses over the fact that there is ultra-effective disk cleansing software readily available to the consumer.
Acronis claims its disk cleansing methods are clearly effective as they are used by not only the average consumer, but also in destroying such high profile data as that of government defence agencies and Fortune 500 companies around the globe.
Moreau slammed the Which? Computing article as hypocritical, as the company’s computing study actually recommends the use of disk cleansing software.
“In the current economic climate, individuals and business across the UK are choosing to re-use, re-cycle or donate older laptops. Using this approach means that laptops or PCs can be safely passed onto a new colleague, sold to a third-party, or donated to a charity such as Computers for Africa,” he explains.
By taking the Which? hands-on destructive method, you are not only stopping all the benefits of second-hand hardware, but also costing yourself a lot more money.
Moreau explains how many disk cleansing options come free with back-up and recovery software which is usually around £30. Yet for companies who wish to purchase disk cleansing separately they can expect to pay around £20.
When the INQ asked Moreau why someone would pay to cleanse their hard drive when they could simply smash it up for free, he responded by pointing out that alongside the other benefits of recycling your hardware, smashing it up would only cause more problems as you have to follow strict international guidelines (WEEE) when dumping old hardware.
“Even if it is marginally cheaper it’s not a ‘green’ recommendation since it goes against the idea of recycling hardware,” he explains.
So it seems that although perhaps more fun, smashing your hard drive into smithereens is clearly not the best option. So put that toolbox away for a while. There is also some decent free disk-wiping software to be found on the web as our commentalists will no doubt point out below. μ
Share this:
Pay £20, and oh look, you can suddenly sell off all your old HDs rather than smash them up!
Or you could chuck the value of that HD down the drain - hammers can be fun, admittedly
Who would pay when you can get the excellent "Darik's Boot And Nuke" for free? http://www.dban.org/
Good grief. DBAN.
http://www.dban.org/
The DoD 7 pass is as good as it gets for modern disks. Don't bother with the 32 pass, ever. It's for older tech and contains all methods, as noted here:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html
boot your favourite linux livecd and simply write out /dev/urandom and/or /dev/zero...
You Have to Break idea You Knows Whats In There, You Don't. Take 'Er apart & use spindle for Racing Wheels or as attachments for model RR flat cars.
Also You Can Hammer Hard Drive for Going Clunk, Clunk & being defective Zero.Then Dispaly Results, OnLine, Here in theINQ & be blessed, Minds can be wiped clean or Hammered, too ts. Hey Great Example of FOUND Hard Drive Fixing SomeOne for Good is Valerie Phlame Affair in US CIA/WhiteHouse Few Years Back.James ?miller Moved from wilson blvd in arlington &or someone left Pentium aged equip. near trash, then gave computer to Passing recycler, who ran it, Citrix decoded it for US, & Wahla, Instant Problems. Drashek
People whom remove SS numbers from Account holders skin are probably illegal data dystroyers, two!!, err II Tutu..
By all means give your data away. I have seen data recovered from spindles that have gone through 3 or 4 full runs of multiple disk wipe software packages. The write heads are simply not powerful enough to completely destroy the data on the platters, no matter how many runs you do, no matter what software you use.
Hammers are too much work, buy a tree shredder, and put in a carbide blade set.
There's the "scrub" package for Linux, if that's what you happen to use.
Easy to install and run, has US DoD and other federal standards algorithms, etc.
Can clean an entire drive (not the one you're system is booted from, obviously), a whole partition, or just the free space.
Maybe run the biggest magnet across it that you can find after using the software method...although I don't know if it would be necessary to [nearly] touch the actual platter with it to corrupt the bits using this method but either way it should cause additional data deterioration.
Write /dev/urandom/ to disk 5 or so times and there ain't a thing that'll get that data back. Totally free too.
Yeah, I remember that bit - I totally loved that movie. "The Net" wasn't it, or maybe "Sneakers". There was this chick and she totally recovered this data using a laser only there was a quantum tunnel on the disk and the CIA was watching her only it wasn't _really_ the cia but some lawyer firm. Hmmm - maybe it was that John Grisham film actually?
It would actually be really useful if readily recoverable data remained "no matter how many runs you do" - rather than muck around with compression or get a newer drive I'd just keep layering more & more atop the old data, all recoverablly
Physical destruction is faster than software wipe. Put the HD on a Drill Press. 10 sec later, Done.
Why all this talk of destroying good drives? Why not remove the drive before getting rid of the computer and use it as extra storage or even...backup? Yes, backup - the thing a lot of people refuse to do until they experience severe data loss.
If I have a bad drive, I remove the screws and destroy the platters. It takes a little longer than the drill method, but I am confident that nothing will be recovered. Besides, I like to play with the magnets that are inside :D
If your machine will be put into service with the original hard drive, and by people who are at best curious, wiping may be effective.
It is NOT effective against forenesic examination by experts. Anything of value or questionable legality will be recoverable by this system. The only SAFE wipe is done by laying the drive on the pavement and having a pavement roller pass over it 37 times, and then passing it through a shredder. Software is not the answer against determined recovery experts.
Fundamentally its about time and money--we do not "donate" functional hardware. When we dispose of Hardware it is dead--all potential use sucked out of it existence.
Then comes the "time" aspect--which == MONEY. Three "love taps" from a lump hammer and the drive is as safe as any software can make it--and only requires 15 seconds. [...plus there is a "reward" aspect--I generally have two-three co-workers lining up for their personal go when there is a batch of drives to be "loved"!]
Ready, set, SMASH!
I just finished ripping apart 4 old disks. I took out the magnets which are exceptionally strong. ;)
Besides smashing them can be fun. The platters are also good for hanging up on mobiles.
How do you know that your wiping software really worked? You don't... you just have to trust that it really wiped all the data.
I save up dead drives and then once a year it's MC Hammer time. I pull the covers and then pound the platters with a hammer until they're bent. Usually scratched to hell at that point too. The fun ones are the laptop drives with glass platters... you don't have the pull the cover with those, just a hammer and a punch on the outside cover.
After that I *know* and can *see* clearly that nobody is going to be recovering data from those drives.
Everything I have read indicates that a single pass zero of the drive is completely effective and that data recovery companies won't even attempt to recover a drive that has had this done to it. Best of all, it's free sauce.
Sorry If Suggest ANY Hard Drive Should Be Chucked. If it goes clunk or electronics went south, BEST Bet For Todays Desktop HArdrive is have copy made on new external HD at local Tech Retailer.Or maybe even burn some blu. After ALL, Thats What ITs for.
STeWie drashek
A single pass zero simply makes it more difficult to recover the data. Data recovery companies will do whatever you pay them to do, and government data recovery agencies aren't deterred. If you've got sensitive data to destroy that other parties want and are prepared to expend sufficient effort and/or money to recover, are you really going to take that chance?
Incidentally an interview in New Scientist 2446, 08 May 2004, with Axel Valentin, 'computer forensics expert at the US Department of Defense's Computer Forensics Laboratory in Linthicum, Maryland,' stated that '"One suspect microwaved his hard drive to destroy the evidence," Valentin says. "That data was completely unrecoverable."'.
Either way, to destroy your data without destroying the drive here's another vote for DBAN.
I had a big fat security clearance once. That project, and many others, required physical smash-up of HDDs after they were not needed or projects got canceled. I remember the miserable security tech, with crude hand tools and a wastebasket, physically taking apart about 20 or so HDDs in his little cubicle. Fun city.
I read once that Norwegian IBAS - a data recovery company with international customers NEVER have managed to recover something that has beeen overwritten more than 3 times. The way I see it, it is indeed only environmentallly and financially damaging using a hammer. Always treat the hardware the best you can, and use two erase programs if you are unsure if either worked. Make sure they are acknowledged and you use a good erase pattern. :-)
If hammers don't suit your style, why don't you try some DIY? Drilling the drive, for example.... (much less tyring than using a hammer). Also you may just break the disk shell (possibly even with a screwdriver or a punch), then you may pour in some epoxydic glue. The artistic DIY maniacs may as well destroy the disk, tear out the platters and make shurikens out of them...
It may be true that abundantly funded adversories can recover data after a few overwrites - the literature on this with modern drives is contradictory & like anything in security shot full of paranoia, boosterism, and coat trailing. However we can be quite sure it's not cheap to do so - so given a random drive an attacker has to decide if the value of the recovered data will on average exceed the investment. Spamming out a trillion keylogger links seems a rather better bet. Schneier's analogy of bullet-proof vests seems useful here: there is no doubt at all that they save lives, but equally there's no doubt that the cost & inconvenience isn't warranted for most of us, most of the time.
Sorry but we replace drives when they're just too small and new ones are bigger and cheaper. Nobody wants my old 9/18 GB SCSI drives for 99p on Ebay, so they really have no re-use value. Not going to use tiny old drives for backups! Now, where's that angle grinder?
If an HD dies then you have to use the smash it up approach as you cannot wipe it, but a data recovery firm could easily read the data from the platters.
With regards "duff" drives and recovery of data from such, that assumes the recovery company can still get hold of heads for the drive... if the drive is old enough, getting heads to perform a recovery against a damaged platter can be tough. I know because we've got a not terribly old drive with a recovery company and they've gone through 5 sets of heads trying to get a clean image...
That guy on the report said think of the polar bears or something and recycle HDDs and not smash them!
Surely once you've given it all it deserved for all those lost files over the years it can be recycled still, NO? Or is it that only new stuff can be recycled. HAR AHR!
Just out of interest, when was this?
Older drives (before PRML was used) could be recovered, but for pretty much any drive made in the last 8 years overwriting the data (dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hd0) is enough to render it recoverable.
It was mentioned in the comments on the previous article, but my son and I prefer the "phase change" technique induced by heating the platter to a temperature above the Curie temperature. The Curie temperature depends on the specific magnetic material used, with pure iron requiring 1043 K. Iron oxides have somewhat lower Curie temperatures, and if the iron has been deposited on an aluminum platter, that will melt at about 933 K. An ordinary propane torch can sustain temperatures over 2000 K, enough to melt most steel alloys (1300 K - 1800 K). Of course, melting is not required -- it simply guarantees that you have exceeded the Curie temperature. Seeing the iron oxide coating bubble and peel off of the underlying platter is also a pretty good sign that the media will be unreadable by any conceivable technology. Just be sure to get all of it -- at today's areal densities, even a small piece of readable disk surface may hold a lot of bytes of user data. If my conversions are correct, a new hard disk with an areal density of 250 Gbit/in^2 will hold 45 MB in a 1mm x 1mm patch of unerased surface area.
I work in IT for the government in North America. We bought a machine specifically for destroying hard drives. It drills 3 holes through the platters so data cant be brought back.
pls explain to me how its easier to recycle a non hammered drive? metal is recycled by fragmentation and melting....
Acronis is just trying to peddle their crap.
Heck best way is sit a big assed speaker-cone magnet on your hard drive for a few days.
I* usually just open the drives up and use the platters for decor, always a conversion piece
No fragments to blind u :P