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39 Comments
- mooseman089, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yea the program is called boot and nuke http://dban.sourceforge.net/ my friend gave me some old computers and didn't wipe them and I was kind enough to wipe it with that and not look any of stuff its a pretty program to have on a floppy just incase
- gamer31, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2good way to sell the drive then.
Selling 40 gig hard drive. I have used this drive for many years and it is very quite and i am very pleased with it. I recent bought a 120 gig hard drive and no longer need the 40 gig. Installed on the hard drive is turbotax and several other programs like microsoft word. - kilmer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sweet thats a good selling point. 'Buy my personal information and receive a free hard drive with it.'
- luchid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@TheNativeRaver:
Problem is, it's not really the drives belonging to home computers that they're after, it's old business computers' drives. And There's no way for an individual to control whether the grocery store they go to, or the dealership that sold them their car is going to be so reckless with their personal data. - 0Troy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@abudhabi
You can be assured, this is no conspiracy theory... This is actively being performed... You can sell your HD on ebay if you want to find out =) - inactive, on 09/06/2008, -0/+1The best mortgage rates, refinance, home loan, real estate, realty http://tophomemortgageloan.com
- Achra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm going to sell a bunch of my used Harddrive now. :)
1 lot of 1gb-20gb (assorted) drives recovered from ATM machines. - Elranzer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Nice. I just bought a 7200rpm hard drive to replace the 4200rpm one stock in my business laptop, and was about to sell it. I was already going to wipe it clean, of course, but now I may "omit" that fact from the auction.
Maybe information treasure hunters will pay top dollar thinking they'll get information, when then all they get is an empty HDD with no partitions on it. OOPS!
Not like they can claim fraud either. What are they going to tell eBay/PayPal?...
"Hey, I was under the impression that the seller's personal information was going to be on there! He wiped it clean!"
I don't think eBay of all companies (who deals with identy theft all the time) are going to simpathize with an identy thief in this situation... - FrostyFire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0People act like it's a problem if someone gets your credit card number. Oh no! Like anyone who accepts credit cards won't only ship to the billing address A, and B, if any charge shows up on your bill you don't agree with your CC company removes it immediately, no questions asked. It's called a charge back, sucks for sellers, great for buyers.
Anyway, I think this is a lot of bull....people want hard drives because there's a huge shortage of IDE hard drives for older computers. - jk_baller23, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0well, if you sell a NIB drive, then I'm not sure they are going to find any info.
- zbeast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This story pops up like once every 6 months or so and every time it does.
I try to sell my old small but working hd's and you know what. No one buys them.
Heck I've even filled them with all kinds of fun files. On well no one loves me.
There are tons better ways to get good data. Most large businesses are on top of this
and grind up or drill there HD's. - thenativeraver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0That's why you do a wipe before you sell.
If you leave stuff on there you deserve to be screwed over. - teh_toaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It'd be nice if the write of that article took more time to write it properly. But heres a couple utilities for those getting ready to sell:
http://www.linux-kurser.dk/secure_harddisk_eraser.html
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ - j0keR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I really don't think this is a huge issue. Most people who will sell their hard drive without wiping it probably don't have much interesting/personal information on there anyhow. It is something that users should be educated about, yes, but only for privacy reasons...
- abudhabi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0yet another conspiracy theory
- Zoplax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I recently worked on a donated computer, where the user had simply deleted their data in Windows and didn't go through more aggressive measures like deleting and then zero'ing out the drive. Using a utility off a CD image freely available on the web, I was able to recover images, MP3s, security information, etc.
If you're going to give away or sell your hard drive, use a utility like Active KillDisk. Start the program before bed, set it to perform however many wipes you're comfortable with, then in the morning hopefully you'll have a drive that will be very difficult to recover data from. - DuraznosTJ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I thought there was a utility on sourceforge that aided in permantely erasing hardrives. It used the US DOD specs. Anyone know of this?
- netmancer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ebay isn't the only place for this to occur.. Ever get a laptop from a pawn shop? Or buy pcs at auction houses, flea markets, etc. Even your neighborhood tech support guy may take a peek at your data while he's fixing your system, which can be an issue when you take your pc in for servicing (assuming you're the average pc using grandma). I once repaired a laptop for a neighbor who bought it from thier company. Even though it was "protected" with some pc lockdown software, and I didn't have the admin password, I was still able to gain full access to the pc and all of the interesting data on it. Imagine if that pc was serviced by someone with less ethics... :-)
- sharigan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0remember to fully "wipe" your hd.. means delete all files.. fill it up with trash and delete again..
- bobbknight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think this was on slashdot two years ago, John Stith, I think is doing a lazy article for a buck.
- cell-gfx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"It'd be nice if the write of that article took more time to write it properly"
AhahahahAHAHAHhaaHAH! Exactly. - hoowahman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I once almost bought a 250 gig harddrive off ebay with 108 gigs of mp3s on it. 1800+ albums and delete the ones I did not own. It was a "back-up" drive. =) I lost the auction...so yeah you could say this people paid 40-50 bucks more for this thing too.
- jp22382, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The professional version of Active Killdisk will do the trick without a doubt, you can setup multiple passes, will completely wipe out anything.
- Tonyisbad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've sold a few Harddrives on ebay, but never my main drive. I always sell my harddrives with a copy of all my music and video files on it. It usually sells for about 50 dollars more cause of the files i have it. So remember to just say it is a free gift the files on the drive.
- NewEvolution, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Again, the issue here is commercial hard drives, wherein the seller doesn't give a damn about what may or may not be on the drive. Anyone who sells a personal drive without wiping and filling it with random data and re-wiping deserves whatever is coming to them.
- kingygk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wipes just dont do it. there are special programs that write zeros to corrupt the data. Data can be recovered even after a format.
http://www.download.com/Master-Shredder/3000-2092_4-10453085.html?tag=lst-0-10
Corrupt those naked girlfriend digital cam pics people. :) - Kriz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0sounds like a good way to make a quick buck.
buy some hard drives (brand new), open them up, and sell for more on eBay. - MrGray, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Is there any cure for stupidity ?!?!?
- nogami, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As posted above, sounds like you could get even more for your old HD if you are a little bit creative about the history:
"Think it's a 20gb harddrive, pulled out of some old bank computers when the main power supplies failed"
Could probably get some extra bids from people looking to salvage old data.
As mentioned above, use "Boot and Nuke" to wipe your old machines. Needs no OS, boots from floppy or CD, supports most HD controllers and drives. - tlink211, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oh ya...DBAN is free!
http://dban.sourceforge.net/ - doctorarcane, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As someone interested in security, maybe this would be a great way to gain practice with forensic tools like Helix/Sleuth etc.
I was going to comment on the writing, but if you can't say anything nice... - tlink211, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I just used "Darik's Boot and Nuke" (DBAN) yesterday. First time, for me, using this type of software. I burned the iso and booted from CD. The quick erase, which is one pass of zeros, took under four hours for a DBAN Quick Erase on an 80Gig drive. Here's some times I found posted on the Internet for a 20 gig drive.
DBAN Quick Erase
00:28
DBAN RCMP TSSIT OPS-II
02:19
DBAN DoD Short
01:09
DBAN DoD 5220-22.M
02:05
DBAN Gutmann Wipe
04:32
DBAN PRNG Stream
4 Passes 01:24
8 Passes 02:19
I did a "quick check" with some recovery software I have and it found nothing.
I did have to format the partitions for the drive to be usable again. - IvyMike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think that, from linux, you can do a wipe -kD /dev/hda
You probably want to have booted from a different hard drive or cd when you do that.
I've been doing -kDq which is only a four-pass write, but I suspect that's more than enough for my lame information. - gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0dban it first and you don't have to worry.
- sonic767, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Blog spam, from a blog that is set up to be spammed on digg. This blog's articles have a link "digg this" and "Add to delicious" and "Add to yahoo". Spam about spam, I can't get over how dumb diggers can be!
Real source for this information is Simson's web site http://www.simson.net/blog/
No digg (obviously), + spam - tabgilbert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0There were so many typos in the article i did not want to forward it to anyone.
- anastrophe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0What a pathetically badly written article. If he's getting paid to write articles like that, i want to know who's paying him. I could make a fortune - I can write complete sentences without typos or redundancies!
- hoowahman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I think most programs that come with harddrives have a low level formatting.
