Shredding files on a laptop.

[Hilo Black]

No evidence that GCHQ can do a thing about it.

[Huge]

yes it is. It's trivial.

[The Natural Philosopher]

depends how much the disk is used afterwards. And on what format its been using.

[T i m]

And after many years working in Field Service / IT Support ... building, repairing and upgrading this sort of thing I think it can also be a shame. Granted the cost and therefore 'value' of PC gear has lot much lower over the years but even a 40G laptop drive would have some use and therefore value to someone (like me). ;-)

For example, if it was IDE I might be able to upgrade an older laptop or (as has been mentioned) put it in an external USB caddy and use it to backup your documents or give it to someone else to do the same.

I've just built a PC out of 'bits' I was given (that would otherwise have been thrown away) to give to a mate for their kid. C2D, 4G RAM,

250G SATA, IDE DVDRW and now running W10.

Mum just had her hall carpet ripped up (that had been there as long as I can remember) and she was going to get one of us to 'throw it away' (wherever 'away' is)?

I put it on Freecycle and it was taken the next day for someone to put on their allotment.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle ... but many people CBA so another legacy all our kids will eventually pay for.

Cheers, T i m

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Martin Barclay escribió:

badblocks is useful too, e.g.

badblocks -swv /dev/sdX

this runs 4 passes, on each pass filling the entire disk with 0xAA,

0x55, 0xFF then 0x00. The 0xAA and 0x55 are to ensure each and every bit gets twiddled.

You can also apparently use the "-t random" parameter to write random stuff, but I haven't tried it.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M

is probably sufficient for 99% of cases.

This is, of course, assuming that the disk makers are being honest about the usable space. Having seen recent reports about hacking disk firmware (some of which run Linux, surprisingly), I'm a bit suspicious about what goes on 'behind the scenes' in the areas we are not being told about.

Disks are no longer the simple block device they used to be.

[The Natural Philosopher]

which is why people subcontracted to decommission corporate PC desktops always crush the disk, and usually crush the whole machine - its not worth removing the drives.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'll let you know when I get the results from Retrodata. They have a faulty HD of mine at the moment. It just crashed overnight, so hopefully isn't heavily corrupted. But it is from an Acorn RPC.

[Brian Gaff]

[News]

In message , Brian Gaff writes

I agree with Brian. Too late now, I realise, but my wife's Toshiba laptop suffered the same problem. Cleaning the vents made no difference so I found a video on YouTube and dismantled it, down to the fan which was clogged with crap. Probably dog hair. Anyway, cleaned it thoroughly and that cured the overheating problem.

[harry]

Why not take the hard disk out and chuck it in the fire?

[Robin]

Thanks. I thought that'd possibly suffice for modern disks but I wondered about homeopaths getting hold of the disk :)

[Michael Chare]

+1 I cleaned the fan of my Dell laptop following some disassembly instructions google found, plus a youtube video which told me about another screw. It had a similar overheating problem.

[tony sayer]

Crap cleaner has an overwrite facility from once to several times and its free...

[Andrew Mawson]

And if you cannot access the drive as it's electronics have failed (as was my case) - how good is it then compared to a sledge hammer or a cold saw - not a lot I suspect ?

Andrew

[The Natural Philosopher]

And if you cannot access the drive as it's electronics have failed (as was your case) how many people even of the criminal persuasion are going to spend the money or have the equipment to read it just in te off chance it has some information worth stealing?

[Andrew Mawson]

Why take the risk balanced against the expenditure of two minutes time ?

Andrew

[Vir Campestris]

That would work on memory (1), but not on disc. Disc encoding is rather more complex. Back in the days of MFM we use to write B6D9 or 6db6 as an easy size approximation to the MFM worst-case pattern - 110110110110 etc. And MFM was simple.

Andy

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Vir Campestris escribió:

That's interesting to know, thanks. One more layer of complexity for the spooks to work through? I have to admit I hadn't thnought about the encoding - assuming the bits were written to the surface 'as-is'. MFM is simple, my brain began to hurt once we got past RLL.

The sledgehammer is starting to look like the best option to prevent GCHQ reading your begging letters to Aunt Flo :)

[tony sayer]

In article , Andrew Mawson scribeth thus

Standard DIY answer fecking Angle Grinder;)....