1 in 10 Used Hard Drives Contain Personal Information

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According to this article, eleven percent of the hard drives used in this study were owned by people that have never read the [H]. The rest of you know how we erase hard drives. :D

A total of 200 hard drives bought from Internet auction sites and trade fairs were examined, and the results are quite shocking. 11 percent were found to contain personal information belonging to the previous owner, while another 37 percent had what is described as “non-personal” information. Only 38 percent of the drives had been properly wiped, while a further 14 percent were damaged and unreadable.
Click to expand...
 
There's nothing as refreshing as taking a drive out of service and then putting a few bullet holes through it. Looks erased to me.
 
I bought a 2.5" laptop drive from ebay. What did it have on it? A Windows Vista install, complete with photos from vacations, documents from work, and a variety of other things.

Needless to say I formatted it...but come on people. THINK.
 
i'm more surprised it's so low. I would have have thought at least 25% of the HD's out there have personal info.
 
I'm suprised it was that low.

As for the drives containing non-personal information, big deal.
While I would normally securely wipe a drive, I might not bother on an old drive I used for testing that I knew had nothing more than the base OS installed.
 
The only time a hard drive generally leaves my possession is for repair/replacement after doing secure erase a few times if possible. If it's just old and small I either hold onto it until I have a use for it or do what I do with the broken ones that are out of warranty. Smash it with a 3lb copper hammer before disposing of it. You can never be to careful with your data.
 
DogChainX said:
I bought a 2.5" laptop drive from ebay. What did it have on it? A Windows Vista install, complete with photos from vacations, documents from work, and a variety of other things.
Click to expand...
I bought a used cell phone with about 1000 pictures from a euro vacation, about a dozen plane flights and a picture of the guy's passport! Lol! Funny part was where the guy said he used the phone "sparingly" and it was "like new." Explains the million scratches on the screen...
 
Oh ya, I forgot pics from his deer hunting trip and legal papers from his work.
 
I work for the KS state government and we have our engineering guys cut ours in half with a plasma cutter :D

Our old Deathstars with the glass platters just got smashed with a hammer. I have one on my desk that had a head crash and took off all of the magnetic coating and the platters are completely clear.
 
My old hard drives were filled with personal info when I threw them in the trash. Good thing I took a big ole drill bit to them.

Was more work than I expected though. Hard drives can be tough little bastards.
 
Last week I got my hands on a new (to me) phone.

It came with a bonus of the previous owners T&A among other things.:D
 
Last time a hard drive crashed on me, I had a fire. Like a legit fire, in my firepit, with mesquite and a bunch of 2x4 scraps and creosote I trimmed and whatnot. Nice, pleasant fire, and the drive sat in the coals in the middle and got nice and hot.

Funny how it made its way into the barrel half-full of very, very cold water next to it...
 
The last harddrive I didn't take a hammer to "Office Space" style an old roommate and I DBAN'd it then loaded Win98 and loaded it with as much pron as we could find on the desktop. The desktop wallpaper was everyone's favorite 2girl1cup. I then sold it to a guy I worked with at the time. He got curious when it started booting an O/S. It was the first and last time his girlfriend saw 2girls1cup. LOL
 
If I get rid of a drive it gets Evan or gdisked before I scratch the hell out of the circuit board and destroy the power an data connectors. Thewait for theit turn on the firing line.
 
If I get rid of a drive it gets dban or gdisked before I scratch the hell out of the circuit board and destroy the power and data connectors. Then they wait for their turn on the firing line.


Here we go with out the auto correct bs.
 
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