Too good to throw away

[Thomas Prufer]

And the drives themselves make excellent front-surface mirrors. With a hole in the middle for sticking a flashlight through, great for poking around in inaccessible places.

Thomas Prufer

[tabbypurr]

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

Loudspeaker, cassette tape and audio typist..

[jack]

Costs nothing to use DBAN and bugger all time too.

Bullshit.

[GB]

It takes ages to run, although I agree you don't have to stand over it. Hitting the drive hard with a big hammer takes virtually no time, and is quite satisfying. :)

Would bullshit work better than a hammer?

[tabbypurr]

It does for Rodney, every time.

[Weatherlawyer]

No you should seek Raspberry. That an a new hard drive would get you a nice gift.

[Weatherlawyer]

Doesn't La Palma have a volcano or are you just a compulsive tosser.

[Mike Tomlinson]

It has several, actually. I worked for 14 years at an observatory on the rim of the crater of the largest one, the Caldera de Taburiente.

Looked in the mirror lately? I'm waiting for your apology, though suspect it won't be forthcoming.

Wanker.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , GB escribió:

(you're replying to one of Wodney's many nyms)

Wodney's bullshit would wipe a drive to a post-nuclear Armageddon state.

[Johnny B Good]

Unless the drive is so old that it predates the PMRL data reading technique that's been in common use for some 15 years or thereabouts, a single pass "Low Level Format" (LLF) using the disk maker's diagnostic programme will more than suffice even against the best attempts of government sponsored attempts at forensic discovery of scraps of incriminating data.

Smashing a modern disk with a hammer whilst effective against the casual data miner is actually less effective against detailed forensic techniques to recover sufficient snippets of incriminating data. You'd do much better with just a single pass LLF. For anyone with something they really want to hide, then an oxyacetylene torch or a really hot furnace will provide the unquestionable destruction they so crave of their data.

It seems a shame to destroy even a drive as small as 1% of the current top capacity drives available today (6TB - forget the 8TB Archival shit from Seagate). A 60 GB drive can still offer enough storage to experiment with even recent versions of windows or *nix based distros.

That's fine if you fancy dabbling in older computer OSen but beside the point if one is merely freeing up storage space by eliminating unused / out of date / outlived its usefulness kit.

TBH, it sounds as though Derbyborn has already taken the drive apart making it beyond redemption as a functioning device (all that "wonderful peice (sic) of precision engineering" is contained within the confines of a far from transparent metal housing).

However, I do understand his feelings with regard to the junking of, often still functioning gadgets, merely because a more powerful and even cheaper collection of such clever gadgetry has rendered it completely obsolete in all but a few usage cases where its primary function remains unchanged.

[Johnny B Good]

If you're a terrorist, a single pass LLF is a much better bet than smashing it with a hammer. If you prefer to "get physical" with the destruction of a drive's data, then use either an oxyacetylene torch or a very hot furnace. At least that way, you won't have to google a decade old drive model to confirm whether or not PMRL was used before relying on a LLF to erase the data.

Ah! A man after my own heart (re the Seagate putdown). :-)

A LLF (just overwriting every sector with zeros using the manufacturer's disk drive diagnostic or the dd command to do exactly the same thing - the LLF isn't a true low level format) will more than suffice since the drive makers started using PRML read techniques to permit elimination of any redundancy in the written to track data patterns which the forensic data recovery techniques used to be able to rely upon with the older drive designs to collect enough incriminating snippets of data by which to bring a successful prosecution in a serious crime case.

If your only concern is to protect against the casual hacker, a LLF, even with pre-PRML drive models will more than suffice.

[Clive George]

At the risk of agreeing with TNP, a VM is a better option for that sort of thing than an old HD.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Exactly. The only reason for old or multiple *hardware* is if it has some particular bit of peripheral on it that you cant drive with modern stuff. Like an AT style IEEE bus card on a machine running DOS 2.

FFS even CP/M can be run on an emulator faster than it used to run on a Z80

[T i m]

I think it depends on what your goals are. The PC I built with the intention of running Linux to replace XP on a Mac Mini as my 'daily desktop' (but gave up on because Linux can't replace XP for me yet but is still there dual booting with W10) has two trayless 3.5" SATA bays.

Therefore, if I'm *really* testing a new OS I want to:

1) be able to see how it performs ITRW on real hardware

2) to be able to run it 'as is' and *not* have to have anything in the way (of direct hardware / network support)

and

3) to be able to knock it about (so 'just use it' in an everyday sense, not mollycoddle it) and be able to use any everyday tools that expect to see the OS directly, not via some VM.

(to name just 3).

And as you say, smaller drives are normally readily available for free or very cheap and idea for testing such things.

And having two such bays and caddies that allow me to (tool less) add laptop drives to the mix make it a very flexible and yet real world solution / test-bed.

And running any OS on raw iron means (once again) you don't have all your eggs in one basket (or completely scrambled like TNP's ) where if the host OS fails you lose access to all your VM's.

However, because I don't just work in binary (unlike some ) 'of course I will also use VM's because that too is another facet of what someone looking for a solution where a VM might be of value (like telephone support of various OS's) would be pertinent.

My Dad used to run OS 9.2 on his eMac and so I had a copy of SheepShaver with 9.2 on XP so that I could quickly run an OS9 instance and better help him though UI issues etc.

Now, I know some here are obliged to run 'Windows' simply because they can't do all they need with native Linux so for them, running Windows in a VM makes perfect sense. However, if they were *testing* Windows and against lots of hardware there is a good chance the VM would get in the way (as I experienced myself trying to get a Windows VM running on a Linux host to 'see' some CD storage carousels [1]).

Again, horses for courses ...

Cheers, T i m

[1] And we only tried that because there was no native support for said carousels on Linux.

[GB]

The one I threw away the other day was actually a 10GB IBM Deathstar that I found lurking at teh back of the cupboard. I removed it from my PC before it failed.

I could have found a PC with an IDE connection somewhere in the junk room, but I just hit the HDD hard enough to bend the platters and smash the head gear. I did take the lid off first, though.

[T i m]

Or a USB to IDE adaptor or desk quick-mount?

I completely stripped a whole batch of dead drives the other day and now have a good collection of strong magnets and a bit more weight in my 'ally' scrap bag. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Adrian Caspersz]

Is there an often used commercial airline flight path above your house?

[T i m]

Erm, no, I don't believe so? Do think the magnets might put them off course or something? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[dennis]

I would expect my phone to run a CP/M emulator faster than a z80 could.