PC disposal/destruction?

basmic

cowbutt wrote: »

That's a military standard set when MFM and RLL recording schemes were common, but it's not really any more useful than a single random scrub pass for any drive manufactured in the last decade or so that will probably use (E)PRML instead. See the epilogue and further epilogue of http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html for more info.

So explain to me why many erasers include the option to have 7 and 35 passes? Am I missing something?

anewhope wrote: »

That's way, way over the top. If someone that desperate to get at your personal information, then it'd be easier for them to just break into your house. I'm sure Marty J said something very similar recently.

That's all very well, but I believe in prevention.

If it were me, I'd give the drive 7 passes of random data, unscrew every screw in the drive and take it completely to bits. As soon as you remove the platters/discs, you have an extremely small likelyhood of ever aligning the platter back onto so it works again. This why recovery companies remove the heads of the harddrives, and never the platters.

A real harddrive shredder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_O7-rqcHc

cowbutt

basmic wrote: »

So explain to me why many erasers include the option to have 7 and 35 passes? Am I missing something?

For compliance with military and government secure deletion standards, where compliance is more important than actually more important than doing the most appropriate thing (actually, facetiousness aside, this removes a possibility for error if someone doing the deletion thinks they're dealing with a new (E)PRML drive, but is actually using an older MFM or RLL drive).

Marty_J

basmic wrote: »

So explain to me why many erasers include the option to have 7 and 35 passes? Am I missing something?

Paranoia.

This message isn't too short anymore.

gjchester

basmic wrote: »

So explain to me why many erasers include the option to have 7 and 35 passes? Am I missing something? :pThat's all very well, but I believe in prevention.

Because that how the spec was written and no-one has bothered to review or update it...
IIRC the USA uses the 7 pass method and the Canadians use the 35 pass.

basmic

Well even when I'm selling a drive on eBay, I always make sure to do the 7 pass wipe - if I'm bored, I'll run it again.

spakkker

Came across this on an old thread on this forum - seems apt -
http://www.funny-games.biz/beatup-pc.html

AirCooledHeaven

You could buy one of these

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYPCPB1g3o

kwikbreaks

If you installed Visat on it the buyer would be sure to reformat it saving you the trouble