secure disposal of computer

[bubbles]

I have reluctantly got to get rid of/give away my iMac (in tasteful lime green and working perfectly well).

I spent yesterday transferring any personal stuff I could find on it to an external hard drive.

However, I am still a bit concerned about security.

Don't really want to smash my old friend to bits but don't want anything to come back to bite me at a later date.

Any ideas or reassurance would be great.

Thanks

[Les]

Format the Hard Drive?[I]

[Théière]

It is just as easy for anyone who wants to to read the formatted drive. You can purchase data wiping software or take out the drive.

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

I must admit that my favourite data wiping method involves a sledgehammer and an electric drill. Otherwise you'll need an application that deletes all the data from your drive and then writes random junk all over it several times if you want to be proof against serious data bandits. What programs there are available for your machine I know not. What version of operating system does your Mac have: OS X or one of the earlier ones?

That said, formatting and reinstalling the OS from scratch will be enough to deter most casual new owners.

[Quillan]

[quote user="Albert the InfoGipsy"]

I must admit that my favourite data wiping method involves a sledgehammer and an electric drill. Otherwise you'll need an application that deletes all the data from your drive and then writes random junk all over it several times if you want to be proof against serious data bandits. What programs there are available for your machine I know not. What version of operating system does your Mac have: OS X or one of the earlier ones?

That said, formatting and reinstalling the OS from scratch will be enough to deter most casual new owners.

[/quote]

Don't know about Mac's but usually if you do a 'full recover' from the CD's that came with the machine it will format it as well. If your giving it to somebody you know I doubt you will have a problem. There is some very sophisticated software out there for recovering data from disks but its expensive and not economical for a person to buy just to see if they can recover data from 1 hard drive. Most companies therefore do the 'crush and burn' to all HDD's in redundant kit. We used to get a guy with a really big road roller to come along and put all the HDD's in a line in the car-park and he would roll over them with a guy from the companies IT department as witness, they came out a 1mm thick by the time the guy had done 2 pass's with the roller. They then went to a secure disposal company that threw them in a furnace. That was just PC's it got more complicated when they upgraded the drives on the servers.

Just as an after thought you could take the drive out and sell/give the machine to somebody else, new drives (350mb) cost around £50 (Googled new drive) so they might think they have got a bargain if you price it right or just give it away. You can then set about the old drive with a hammer.

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

Road roller? Whatever happened to craftsmanship?

1) Sledgehammer to dismantle drive

2) Bend platters in half and hammer flat

3) Drill numerous holes through platters

It was good enough for a firm that handles about half of all credit card details in the UK.

[Quillan]

Wasn't a certain company in Basildon/Southampton by chance. I can remember one of my guys (we had a contract with them to carry out system upgrades) telling be that he was sitting next to an IBM engineer who was tracing the serial number of a drive that he had just tried to install but it failed straight away only to find it was marked (on IBM's service database) as being scrapped. Caused one hell of an argument and IBM nearly lost their maintenance contract over it.

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

Nope. Tewkesbury. They used to be a British firm with a French name but now they're a French firm with a German name.

[Anton Redman II]

For those lack access to a steam roller or similar heavy metal I suggest reading the attached. For in line banking and forum passwords I would suggest changing those when you change PC anyway.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24002

http://www.ehow.com/how_2288433_erase-data-mac-hard-drive.html

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1820

[bubbles]

Thanks for all the advice and help, everyone

Have decided (reluctantly) to get out the sledgehammer - at least that way nothing will come back to haunt me.

[thunderhorse]

Sounds a drastic measure unless there's material on the drive you're really worried about. And who would know and/or want to go looking for such stuff?

Have you done a Google search on the various methods of wiping a HDD securely? There's also zeroing the drive. All software methods and next-to-no expense incurred.

Just a thought.

[Quillan]

Well theres a coincidence, sat down for my cuppa and BBC Click was on and it covered destroying data on CD's, DVD'd and HDD's

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8708074.stm

 

 

[Danny]

I am with Thunderhorse here.

It is not difficult to erase completely all disk data for free for example with DBAN

There is a  version for Macs too.

iso. download here http://dban.sourceforge.net/ppc.html

more info on this page http://www.stanford.edu/group/security/securecomputing/data_destruction_Dban.html

To physically destroy hard drives is the most sure way but it is over the top for most uses. I don't think anyone without millions of ££s of high tech equipment could find anything on a disk which has been thoroughly erased. Even then, it would be extremely difficult as as all the data has been completely replaced many times over in a ramdom fashion.

Danny

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Go on a porn site, get a virus that will irretrievably destroy all your data.

It amazes me that a virus "can" do this, yet when you actually want to erase all your data, it's very difficult.

[bubbles]

yeah, but my lovely machine was a mac and we all know that. macs dont...............................

not going to say it again!

good idea though, richy, rich.

[Anton Redman II]

What a complete collection of misinformation and male cattle import and export data- the advice unless you have the key to Adolf Hitler's Swiss accounts buried on your HD about re writing 7 times will cover you. If somebody dumped a Mac on my desk and said what has it on it I would rub my hands and start and I would probably crack it faster than a PC but I would earn a lot less per hour than I would do as a PC specialist.

I worked with people who hacked 'Exlax' on Geisco in the 70s.

What on earth have you on a Mac that you are worried about other people reading  ?

[Théière]

Holiday Snaps! Nudge nudge [:D]