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Old HD's, worth selling?

F

frankyk

Gawd
Joined
Jan 30, 2004
Messages
891
I have a few 80 GB HD's and I'd like to get rid of them, but I heard that the old data on them is recoverable. I don't have anything REAL sensitive, but the mere fact that someone could recover the data I formatted is a bit disconcerting.

So, my question is, do people sell old HD's with that risk in mind? or is there a method of totally killing ALL data on it?
 
The chance of someone going ot the effort to steal your data (unless you are like in the NSA or something) is slim. You have a greater chance of the local pizza guy copying your Credit Card numbers down.

I think it is like worrying about being bitten by a shark. Yeah it happens, but you drive to work eveyday without fear, don't ya?
 
People do sell used hard drives - if it is something that you are concerned with, there are several programs available that do multi-pass formats and re-writes to make your data more unrecoverable.

As far as I know, it is never really completely unrecoverable unless the drive is physically destroyed... but by doing multi-pass formats and re-writes, anyone without a clean room and thousands of dollars worth of equipment probably won't get to any old data.
 
I sell knowing the risk. I'm more worried about someone digging in my home garbage can than I am worried with somone actually trying to recover data. Remember, you might be working for the city and have a bunch of sewer plans on the drive... wont be really worth the effort to pay so much for a drive just to find that on there :p


Usually thiefs goes to bargain basement computer shows where they can get say 20 hard drives for $20..... that yeilds much higher profits than paying say $50 for an 80 gigger hard drive that might have been used for nothing other than mp3 storage.
 
DoD uses a program called Eraser. DoD uses 7 strips, this program can go up to 35 strips. cheers :p
 
Code: 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

That's good enough for me. I took a computer forensics class and using one pass of zeroes was enough to permanently erase whatever it was I was examining. Of course..the class was Windows based, not nix based so we didn't use dd, but it should have the same effect.
 
Volkum said:
Code: 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

That's good enough for me. I took a computer forensics class and using one pass of zeroes was enough to permanently erase whatever it was I was examining. Of course..the class was Windows based, not nix based so we didn't use dd, but it should have the same effect.
Click to expand...

what?
 
Whitebread said:
I believe he's saying that writing 0s once is good enough to make data recovery extremely difficult and costly.
Click to expand...

Yes. Just do a low level format by writing zeros to the whole drive. At that point, it's not worth the trouble to recover anything off it unless you got like nuclear launch codes or something ridiculous.
 
frankyk said:
how do you do this?

is it some sort of coding?
Click to expand...

You could use the command I gave you from a linux distro (even a live cd if you have one). Otherwise you can just search around google for a Windows utility. I'm sure there are tons out there for free.
 
Volkum said:
You could use the command I gave you from a linux distro (even a live cd if you have one). Otherwise you can just search around google for a Windows utility. I'm sure there are tons out there for free.
Click to expand...
two have been linked in this thread already.
 
I haven't found that selling really old computer stuff is worth my time or effort.

I recently gave away free a 19" CRT monitor and a DVD player - both perfectly working. I tried to sell them for $25 and didn't get any takers.

You can forget shipping since you wont make enough to get that back. So anything worth $25 or less is destined for give away or the dumpster.
 
LordBritish said:
I haven't found that selling really old computer stuff is worth my time or effort.

I recently gave away free a 19" CRT monitor and a DVD player - both perfectly working. I tried to sell them for $25 and didn't get any takers.

You can forget shipping since you wont make enough to get that back. So anything worth $25 or less is destined for give away or the dumpster.
Click to expand...
The way I handle this is to put the item on eBay with a shipping cost that will cover all my costs in shipping the item. Say a DVD, I'd likely charge $10 for shipping. Start the bidding at .01 and let the highest bidder take it. So, you may get $1-15 for it... All profit...

Having said that, I never put things with that little value on eBay unless I've got time I don't know what to do with.
 
frankyk said:
how do you do this?

is it some sort of coding?
Click to expand...
if = input file, which in this case is /dev/zero. You could probably do /dev/rand or /dev/dsp or something for shits and giggles maybe.
of = output file, which is the drive. (Hard Disk 'A'/primary or whatever you want erased).
 
movax said:
if = input file, which in this case is /dev/zero. You could probably do /dev/rand or /dev/dsp or something for shits and giggles maybe.
of = output file, which is the drive. (Hard Disk 'A'/primary or whatever you want erased).
Click to expand...

in dos? sorry if the answer is obvious, in a disk? where do you type this stuff in.
 
frankyk said:
in dos? sorry if the answer is obvious, in a disk? where do you type this stuff in.
Click to expand...

Those are linux shell commands that you'd have to type into a sh or bash window.

You've got a PM about these drives from me also.


 
I keep my hard drives till they die since I need all the storage I can get.
 
WS6 said:
I keep my hard drives till they die since I need all the storage I can get.
Click to expand...

i do that as well, i have near 2 TB of disk space now :) all i can say is i still do not have enough space for my music/movies/tv shows
 
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