Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
I always remove the drives from dead computers. If they drive was a hard fail (nasty noises), most of simple SECURITY destruction has been done.
|
Unless I intend to give a working drive away, my solution is to drive a chisel through the drive in two places. Seriously.
Smacking a chisel is a lot faster than overwriting, and it recycles just as well with the holes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
I remember a TV program where the hosts bought some used laptops and were able to recover sensitive information. There is a problem (I forget the name) that will write to a drive up to 7 times so nothing can be retrieved. I believe 7 is the magic number.
|
This reddit thread discusses the "7 pass" question. The conclusion: it is now longer needed. The reason for multi-pass is to avoid leaving traces of the data to the "side" of the track on the disk. However, the drive itself won't read these side traces. Reading the traces requires removing the platters out of the drive and using some other tool to read next to the tracks, and even that probably won't work.