We just had a hard drive completely fail on us. Dell has given us a new one, but we don’t want to turn over the old one until we’ve had a chance to destroy any sensitive data on it.
So I have two weeks to find a service that will try to recover the data on the drive and/or find a way to wipe it clean. I am in the Washington DC area, so if anyone knows how I would find a local service, I would appreciate it.
Otherwise, any advice or general tips?
Troy
A very large magnet? If you could find one of reasonable strength you might be able to wipe it out. As for data recovery maybe Google might be helpful or the Yellow Pages.
– Xaroc
I’m a big fan of physical destruction (especially given an inoperable drive), but off topic a bit, if you decide to just zero your drive in future situations, your best bet for security is to make sure whatever you use actually writes a random patern over the entire drive, and covers the entire surface area multiple times. Simpy zeroing the entire drive once is not enough against modern scanning methods, which can easily determine the last content of a given sector previous to the final wipe, and sometimes the last couple (or more) iterations of it.
Have you told Dell about your situation? Perhaps they can recommend someone or have a way of satisfying your security needs.
Physical destruction is out of the question. Dell wants the part back, you see. It’s a warranty thing - they replace the broken part but get the old one back. It took some talking just to get to keep the old one for two weeks.
We could just buy it from them, but I’d rather just wipe the thing and send it off. But if we can recover some of the data, we will.
Mark, Dell said that it was up to us since the security thing was our concern. I might try another customer service rep, though.
Troy
I HATE when people make it sound like a reasonable concern is just your own personal hangup.
Maybe they’d settle for the housing and let you remove the actual disk part of the drive? Maybe you just do that on your own, save the disk part somewhere in case Dell bitches, and send them the empty housing?
Here’s some interesting discussion about this.
Multiple passes seems to be the best solution if you can’t go in and remove the media and destroy it. “Also from Norton; gdisk, part of the Norton/Symantec Ghost suite, supports wiping from 1 to 99 passes.”
Or: “The only non-destructive method that works well is a bulk tape eraser. A tape eraser contains a very weighty coil that generates an extremely strong magnetic field.”
I think you’d still have to open up the drive to have the magnet be effective.
ian
Some cryptodorks (like myself) tend to hold to a minimum of 3 passes with a random bit string, shuffled with 3 passes of all 0s. So write 0s, random, 0s, random, 0s, random (best to end with the random string, not the 0 string). DOD standard is either 3 or 7, I can’t remember, for sensitive data. Intel physically destroys all old data drives by incinerating them, or they used to if they don’t still.
If you cannot access the drive, i.e. a BIOS won’t recognize it, then you will need to go the magnet route. Unfortunately you can’t just open up the casing and go to town if you expect Dell to honor the warranty (most have little bits of sealant or stickers to show when some goofball home engineer attempts to fix his own parts). Best idea probably involves waving the drive around for a few minutes very close to a large magnet, like the type on the rear side of large car speakers. I suggest going to your local Mexicans and asking if you can hear them bump some tunes in their hooptie, while you perform a new bizarre dance about half an inch away from the largest speaker available.
What if you soaked it in rubbing alcohol for a few hours then take the drive out and let any moisture you couldn’t wipe off evaporate? That would FUBAR something right??
-DavidCPA
It would likely FUBAR the electronics, but i don’t know about the media itself
Yeah it sounds like TSG’s company treats the info as important enough to be concerned about Dell’s handling procedures. Alcohol isn’t going to do enough damage to the magnetic content of the disks to really be sure (and it also may invalidate the warranty they are trying to return the drive under anyways).
Hardcore cassette-tape erasing electromagnet is probably the best bet if you can’t get the disk recognized by a BIOS for a software wipe.
Well, it’s not my company per se…mostly important research stuff that my wife does for her job, the government, her students’ information, plus the usual important personal documents - tax material, credit card info, budgets, financial planning, passwords, etc. The Mrs. is really keen on personal security, but it’s a reasonable request IMHO to demand the time to erase this data. I like Dell, but I don’t like them enough to have some customer service guy share my CC account.
I found a company in DC that can do it at 80 bucks an hour. We may just forego the data recovery and go straight to the wipe.
Thanks for all the advice. If they can’t do it, I’ll buy a big magnet.
Troy
I often lie awake at night, wondering what would happen if my vast collection of Donkey Porn was to fall into the wrong hands.
Troy,
If you can still access the disk, a utility like BCWIPE (http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/bcwipe3.htm) should do the job for you.
If not, you can try using a low level utility to wipe the drive – I think it’s an option with SpinRite, isn’t it?
I’m in the DC area, so if you need help with this let me know.
asjunk
Thanks, Asjunk.
The BIOS could recognize the hard drive as installed, but access to its contents was impossible. No booting even from the install disk. The Dell tech guy who brought over the new drive was adamant that we could do nothing with it, but I’m willing to pay a premium for this service.
Nice to know about that program though.
Troy