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100 Comments
- shinythings, on 02/11/2009, -0/+36True, but it is better than selling the drive on eBay without erasing ANYTHING.
For security, I like DBAN - ShuttleDisaster, on 02/11/2009, -0/+33Anyone serious about wiping data needs DBAN: http://www.dban.org/
- inactive, on 02/11/2009, -1/+27"Crap!"
"What?"
"I forgot to delete the porn..."
"You IDIOT!!!!" - Yarkz, on 02/11/2009, -0/+24I once bought a harddrive and it had a nfo archive of a warez group that is now dead, it was one of the most interesting things I ever found, I think the guy who sold it must have been a leader or something, made me think about that for a long time.
- emt1451, on 02/11/2009, -1/+25a "quick format" does absolutely nothing.
- qwer1234qwer, on 02/11/2009, -0/+19This reminded me of an incident last year..when a person bought a camera from ebay and that camera contains some sensitive information related to military and millitant.
Probably ebay should consider opening a new branch : Wipe me off - Schmapdi, on 02/11/2009, -1/+15Hard Drives have been so dirt cheap for years now - who really buy them used anyway nowadays?
Aside from people fishing for credit card numbers and foot fetish porn apparently. - inactive, on 02/11/2009, -1/+15That's her problem for leaving ***** on there, not his for finding it.
- t0ny, on 02/11/2009, -0/+14I volunteer at a museum and we get a few computers and hard drives donated and I dont think I have yet to see one that was formatted before it was given to us.
- OzBushRanger, on 02/11/2009, -0/+13So Future Shop basically resold a customer/clients data to a third party. I imagine there are going to be all sorts of legal repercussions from these types of incident.
- ramsinks.com, on 02/11/2009, -1/+14Yeah "private data". Media treats this like is credit cards.
How many people are creating .txts and listing out their cc data then saving it to a drive?
seriously.
It's ALWAYS just family pics, xls of budget, or a stupid family tree database. who cares?
The phone book as more "security" data about you. - doublefelix, on 02/10/2009, -2/+14That's where that hard drive went!
- longbow486, on 02/11/2009, -0/+12Thermite
- lancedice, on 02/11/2009, -0/+11I guess I should delete my "cards.txt" file then :(
- shinythings, on 02/11/2009, -12/+23At least do a quick format! There is a free tool called Lysol that will slick a drive in about 5 seconds: http://is.gd/j8nH
- soogy, on 02/11/2009, -0/+9Unfortunately, deleting files does not remove it from the disk. As data is written, it constantly goes over "unused" portions of the drive. You could have written over these "unused" sectors many, many times before.
In simple terms, deleting a file basically tells the hard drive "this area is not being used anymore", and eventually it will get overwritten. You need to do an extensive low-level format using an appropriate hard disk tool, which can take a couple of hours depending on the size and speed. High-level formatting, otherwise known as "quick formatting", does nothing to prevent data from being recovered, it just prepares a drive for being reused. - 3Y3CON, on 02/11/2009, -0/+9Yeah this stuff can happen, I work at Future Shop we recently had a computer returned that was resold without being wiped first, the previous owner had pictures of her family and her contact information on the laptop. As fate would have it the guy who bought the laptop was a big creep who found her phone number on the laptop, called her, asked her why she returned the laptop and told her her kids were cute... needless to say they both got free gift cards with large amounts of money on them.
- WillieWendel, on 02/11/2009, -0/+9Two things jumped out at me:
"Kessler's engineers had to use special forensics software to retrieve data from some of the hard drives" and "Kessler said his company specifically avoided buying drives whose sellers indicated that the drives had been erased."
So the headline noting 40% is really inaccurate. - soupdawg30, on 02/11/2009, -0/+9Sounds like eBay is an identity thief's heaven.
- KloroFormd, on 02/11/2009, -0/+8...what?
- GawtMilk, on 02/11/2009, -0/+8I had a 4GB SDHC card that I'd been using for about a year, then I gave it to my dad. Picasa3 deleted some of his photos so he sent it to me so I could recover them. Not only did I recover all 360 photographs, I found pictures of my trip to Mongolia a few years ago and even pictures taken by a stranger on their trip to Cambodia.
I then remembered that I bought the card used in a brick and mortar store. Absolutely insane that after all those years, the stranger's photos were never overwritten -- since the card had never been filled past around 2GB; it didn't have to overwrite/allocate the space containing the images. - Jerky1312, on 02/11/2009, -1/+9"I just made another 100 bucks from ebay!"
"Why do these ppl overpay for your used hard drives?"
"I load it up with tons of porn..."
"You Genius!!!" - tokabowla, on 02/11/2009, -1/+9If they knew they were re-selling a HDD w/o wiping it first, that's completely unethical. You can easily image the drive as it was sold, run darren's boot & nuke if it comes back, then re-image it before you sell it to somebody else. That's an easy $50 you can charge the returner for the service. Only then if they won't pay it, make them sign a form that releases you of all responsibility.
After that, gank their ***** ***** & buy a 52' plasma! - selrahc, on 02/11/2009, -0/+7Thermite probably lowers the resale value a bit though.
- kitsua, on 02/11/2009, -0/+7That's one of the craziest URLs I've ever seen.
- Van3ck, on 02/11/2009, -0/+7I've never bothered to re-sell a used Hard Drive. It's just not worth the risk. Formating them is time consuming, and there are plenty of products out there that can recover deleted/formatted data.
Drives are so cheap these days, they are disposable. Anytime I have outgrown a Drive, I either keep it around to use in an external bay for back up storage and such, or I take the 5-pound sledge to it.
I've even made some interesting geeky decorations by removing the platters and using them in art. ALso the magnets from inside the drives are very strong and fun to stick on things. - angel.wardriver, on 02/11/2009, -0/+6Server hard drives sold with proprietary corporate information such as memos, customer correspondence and confidential employee information? That's ludicrous for anyone, a person or a corporation to sell their hard drive without erasing the data and/or reformatting.
- inactive, on 02/11/2009, -2/+8format = funny, this did nothing to destroy my data...
DBAN = good
Power grinder = best - inactive, on 02/11/2009, -0/+6Upon seeing my reply, OP changed his post to sound less condescending. My response made sense in context.
- Equinox1, on 02/11/2009, -0/+6Those feet are utterly disgusting.
- Bigtruck, on 02/11/2009, -0/+5Only 40%. I thought it would have been higher.
- peteyb1313, on 02/11/2009, -0/+5not necessarily if they went bankrupt
- travbrack, on 02/11/2009, -1/+6seconded
- tokabowla, on 02/11/2009, -1/+6thirded & fourthed.
- AlphaDrake, on 02/11/2009, -0/+5fifthed and sixty ninethed
- MtheoryX, on 02/11/2009, -0/+4What? That would be the first thing I'd check.
If they just leave it there, who's really to blame here? - tokabowla, on 02/11/2009, -0/+4The British government grinds their HDDs into dust & store the dust 50m underground permanently. I can't imagine anything short of wrapping the drive in plutonium & blowing it up in the Nevada desert that could be more secure.
- RyeBrye, on 02/11/2009, -1/+5I bet the price on old hard drives on eBay is suddenly going up :)
- waldo686, on 02/11/2009, -0/+4I would
- carrtoonist, on 02/11/2009, -0/+4Agreed, by the time one of my old drives is not longer useful to me it is far to obsolete to bother selling.
- KloroFormd, on 02/11/2009, -0/+4Buried, but goddamn, that's an interesting method of spam you got there.
- vikramjb, on 02/11/2009, -0/+4data i guess :O
- skztr, on 02/11/2009, -0/+41) Yes, it's the U.S. Government you're thinking of
2) It's not hard drives you're thinking of - SwampyUK, on 02/11/2009, -0/+4I presume these are the HDDs that reach the end of their useful life without being left on trains or stolen out of the boots of cars?
- Clumber, on 02/11/2009, -0/+3Are they at least the droids he's looking for?
Me - I use a special 7.62x39 data destruction tool for our old hard drives. Much more fun than software methods, and the platters end up melted and shattered. Sure, you may be able to theoretically get data off of them... but I expect y'all would rather find an easier project.
I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun my neighbors... - s0nicfreak, on 02/12/2009, -0/+3I don't see any other reason to buy a used hd off ebay.
- adikt, on 02/11/2009, -0/+3Ding Ding Ding!
- ibeetle, on 02/11/2009, -0/+3And it is not just computers. I have bought two used iPods from eBay. Both were not only loaded with the previous owners music, but address book entries as well. Dozens of names, address, landline and cell phone information.
Marketing companies no longer need to spend thousands buying mailing lists? Just hit up eBay for a laptop and a couple of iPods. - alex3005, on 02/11/2009, -0/+3maybe that guy buried his data under 35 feet
- Yarkz, on 02/11/2009, -0/+3Well it says they were sent to be recycled but ended up on eBay so it's not their fault.
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