The NSA likes to melt down drives too. They recover the precious metals and I've heard that it's a rather good return monetarily. Apparently there's some metals like platinum in there.
My point is: YOU determine how detrimental/damaging dissemination of your data could be, and then take the appropriate steps to protect it. If release is so damaging you'd rather destroy the drive than risk release, then sand off the magnetic medium from those disks BEFORE you recycle. Who's to say the recycling company doesn't read'em first? Or a corporate spy assigned to work at a recycling center? And I'd think formatted drives sent to the NSA for meltdown would prolly make a pretty good training media for those at NSA learning to read data from erased/over-written disks. Sanding the platters is a POSITIVE way to forever destroy the data and it's one that most folks can do. Third party forges/furnaces are like accepting candy and rides from strangers. And if all it has is your doom and half-life games and you don't care, then fdisk it and let someone else use it. Army Regulation (AR) 380-19 Appendix E 4.5.2 Destruction of Removable Hard Disks and Disk Packs states that sanding the platters is one of the recommended ways to declassify a Top Secret hard drive. http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ar380-19/appendix_e.htm D. Weiss CCNA/MCSE/SSP2 -----Original Message----- From: John Daniele [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 6:04 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Sadler, Connie J; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Unclassified Disk "Sanitizers" While taking a sledgehammer to a drive does sound quite therapeutic, I would suggest rather, to look around for your local metal recycling company. They will gladly take your old hard drives, monitors, Sun IPCs (on second thought, instead send them over my way! :p) and mince them to itty bitty peices for you! And in much smaller chunks than you could ever possibly replicate with a sledgehammer. www.resourcecon.com is one company that a few of my clients have used. ttyl, _________________________________________ John Daniele Technical Security & Intelligence Toronto, ON Voice: (416) 605-2041 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.tsintel.com On Tue, 26 Feb 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > DoD wipe, Norton Wipe, KO. > > Three passes for sensitive info. Seen KO and DoD used for higher than that. > > And all three could have been the same program. They sure did look alike. > > No idea on price > > I can't find my link at the moment, but there used to be a link to a paper > that went into painful detail how you could build your own -- oops!! found > the link. Luck I remembered "Magnetic force scanning tunneling microscopy > (STM)" Made the search pretty quick. > > This link tells you just how safe your old hard drive is. YOU have to > determine how much effort YOU want to spend to be safe. > > If it was my hard drive with my excel spreadsheet of all my unreturned > public library books (Which I do really intend to turn back in, some day > when I return to the USA (Any lawyer types out there know the statute of > limitations on overdue library books??)) I'd open the drive up and sand off > the magnetic media with an electric sander, then use an 8 pound fine > alignment tool (sledgehammer) to reduce it to shards. > > The link, for those that held out: > > http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/sec96/full_papers/gut > mann/ > > When you read this, don't feel inferior. Uncle Peter Guttmann doesn't want > you to feel that way; he's just oh so much more brilliant than most of us. I > sure felt humbled. > > D. Weiss > CCNA/MCSE/SSP2 > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Kevin Maute [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2002 4:29 PM > To: Sadler, Connie J; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Unclassified Disk "Sanitizers" > > > Connie, > > I found no (reasonably priced) utility when I looked at this about 2 years > ago. I was an Air Force contractor at the time and had much the same > problem > that you (probably) do. > > My solution was to develop a Linux based solution to do this. The advantage > of > this was it supports both SCSI and IDE disks and doesn't care what OS/Data > is > on the disk. > > There was also a document that dictated that for your needs you needed 3 > passes > to "clear" the data and for more sensitive needs require 7 passes to > "sanitize" > the disk. > > Many people that are familiar with disk technologies feel this may not be > enough but to do anything with the data that may still be on the disk > requires > fairly expensive hardware and lots of time... > > Kevin > > > "Sadler, Connie J" wrote: > > > Does anyone have recommendations for freeware or shareware that > effectively > > erases disks for unclassified but sensitive information? This would be > used > > for all machines "retired" to school programs, etc. We need one for > Windows > > and one for UNIX, if one tool can't clean both types of disks. Anybody > have > > experience with this? > > > > Thank you! > > > > Connie > > > > > -- > +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ > Kevin Maute > > Educating people on the avoidable carcinogens in their lives > and how to replace them with safe, superior products. > > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.ineways.com/kmaute > http://www.newaysonline.com > +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ > > > >
