Second Hand Hard Discs Reveal Secrets 446
An anonymous reader writes "BBC News has a story about MIT grads buying old hard discs from eBay and elsewhere, and finding credit card numbers, ATM transactions, porn and emails all accessible on them. Comments? What's the strangest thing readers have found, or left, on a hard drive?"
Another Duplicate.... (Score:5, Informative)
It's all Taco... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm seriously considering blocking CmdrTaco from the list of people whose stories I see. If you look back over the list of duplicates, nearly all of them are Taco's.
Psssst, Taco. A hint for ya: just because you started the site doesn't absolve you of the duty of looking at it once in a while. Say, before you click "Submit."
Re:It's all Taco... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously taco & co : if once in a while someone posts trolls about dupes, you can mod them down and ignore them. But if 1 out of 5 posts gets a +5 remark, I think it really is time to consider actions.
At least say sumtin about it. Right now, the editor attitude "hu, can't hear ya" is seriously giving the impression that they don't give a flying fuck about it.
Re:It's all Taco... (Score:3, Interesting)
The moderators seem somewhat divided on the subject. Here are the moderations for that post as of now:
Offtopic=2, Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Funny=5, Overrated=3, Underrated=1, Total=13
It got a new funny in the time between when I first read it and the time I looked at the mods. I'm sure it will go down and up a few more times.
Maybe I should post this as anonymous to avoid the Offtopic Karma hit. Nah, I'll just hit "No Karma Bonus" and feel the 2 point burn.
By the way, the grandparent post says CmdrTaco does most of the dupes; in my experience it's Timothy who is the king of dupes. I want my money back.
Moderation (On Topic in Thread, read the comment) (Score:2, Interesting)
Or maybe the moderators who give "Offtopic" mods need to learn how to read the parent posts and see if the comment is really off topic or not.
Tangents can and do appear. While they may be "off topic" for the main heading they can be on topic for the context of the thread. For a bunch of people who gripe about context (benchmarks, blame for root exploits, etc) the "Offtopic" mod seems to be used improperly more often than not.
Re:Moderation (On Topic in Thread, read the commen (Score:3, Informative)
very true indeed.
This whole little subdiscussion is very likely to get moderated as offtopic, whereas the only consistent topic in the entire comments is the fact that it's a dupe, which is offtopic.
The whole issue basically comes down to wether slashdot is a "discussion site" or an "information site based on comments". If the main purpose of slashdot is to create a vast and useful archive of comments that can enlighten a visitor seraching for info on a "news for nerd" subject, then indeed we are offtopic. If on the other hand, slashdot is a forum in which nerds can discuss anything they consider nerdstuff, almost everything is on topic !
I suppose the best way is something in between, but right now, I have the impression the balance is shifted way to much towards the first type. Plus, as many of us have said, the biggest problem is the fact that due to the recursive nature of the problem, the problem itself can't be discussed on slashdot.
And that attitude is what we usually call censorship. Slashdot is more and more becoming a selfcensoring community. I've tried to find analogies in the real world, but fail to see one so far. The only thing I'm sure of, is that it is not a GoodThing(tm)
Re:It's all Taco... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's all Taco... (Score:2)
Then do a keyword search and review any articles with a 60% or greater match that was submitted within the last two months to make sure that you aren't posting a dupe.
Re:It's all Taco... (Score:5, Funny)
Now remember, gang, he's a newlywed...He is in that magical time between "I'm a geek and never have a date." and marriage being old hat (or just old). The boy's (possibly for the first time since the site started) got something other than slashdot on his mind...
Re:It's all Taco... (Score:2)
Re:It's all Taco... (Score:2)
Actually, I think timothy is the worst about it. The problem is that timothy only seems to duplicate his own stories (how he manages to do that so often, I have no idea), so if you block timothy, you won't see those stories at all.
TheFrood
Re:It's all Taco... (Score:4, Funny)
If you look back over the list of duplicates, nearly all of them are Taco's.
Those of us who are married know exactly what's going on here. When male human becomes married, all memory functions are relegated to the wife. I've been married for 10 years, and I do well to remember to wear pants, much less retain sufficient buffer space to run a news site.
Re:Another Duplicate.... (Score:5, Funny)
I believe the original story was in the cache files on the hard drives in question.
BaDoom!
Found some really embarassing stuff... (Score:4, Funny)
True story: some years back my wife was doing web design for various clients, one of whom had a graphic artist on staff, who gave her a Mac 100M Zip disk that supposedly had some nice artwork on it for my wife to put on the client's web site.
But the disk appeared to be completely empty, so my wife gave it to me to try to recover the missing files.
No problem under Linux...I recovered a full 100 megabytes of files...but they were all kinky porn!!!
We decided to let the guy off easy and didn't tell his employers what he was doing with company computers and media, but my wife was always a bit leery of working with that guy after that.
(Yes, I did of course save the more, ah, artistic images for, um, later personal, uh, research. ;-)
This kind of amusing leftovers on media is probably extremely common, but most people don't have any motivation to pry around into deleted files. As I recall, this particular disk just had a bit of file system damage that made it appear empty at first, rather than literally having deleted files, so file system repair was enough to get all of the originals back.
Re:Found some really embarassing stuff... (Score:2)
Re:Another Duplicate.... (Score:2)
when we have no news for some hours and were almost forced to discuss the stupid topic on XM and FM radio...
Hard drives are more interesting.
I have 2 SCSI Barracuda hard drives which hold some my internal information. The computer in which those drives were installed is already dead. Could you tell me any way to erase data without using SCSI controller?
I am not planning to physically damage the drives.
Is it possible?
Re:Another Duplicate.... (Score:2)
Floppy disks aren't so bad, since A) they're cheap and B) they're mostly plastic.
Never took apart a Zip disk, though. Dunno what'd happen.
PGP! (Score:4, Informative)
That said, experts would tell you that the only reliable way to make sure sensitive data doesn't get out is to thermite your drive.
Also, what's the one-line unix command (running MacOS X here).
Re:PGP! (Score:3, Informative)
One has to keep in mind that these programs are not designed to work with journaling filesystems. The presence of a journal means that the wiper is not actually certain that the blocks were overwritten.
If one is giving away a hard drive, it is a good idea to low-level format the drive (if it is SCSI), and/or create a partition spanning the entire disk, dd from /dev/zero on to the disk until it is full, and then use a wiper to delete that file.
Tomorrow on New Scientist (Score:5, Funny)
At a worldwide conference held in Atlanta, GA, leading scientists and publishers agreed on a new measurement unit to describe the common phenomenon of news stories getting published repeatedly on internet news sites.
1 Taco = 3 dpm (dupes per minute)
After a lengthy discussion we eventually agreed to name the new unit after "CmdrTaco", founder of the famous web site Slashdot. We are really happy now, this has been bothering us since the beginning of the internet. said Sag. S. Nochmal, German publisher and chairman of the convention.
"CmdrTaco" himself was unavailable for comment. He was last seen yelling "Eternal fame" and "must write automatic re-post script now."
how to elimiate dupe stories.. (Score:2)
It could be a selection right below the metamoderation - "Review Pending Stories". Assuming it waits for 100 votes before deciding what to do, this would only delay the posting process by a few minutes, and it'd make for a much better Slashdot.
well... (Score:4, Funny)
much, much scarier (Score:3, Insightful)
The data has since been destroyed for good, but not until after I spent weeks drooling about the hypothetical possibilities that this could've yielded =)
Slashdot must be using these old hard drives (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Slashdot must be using these old hard drives (Score:4, Funny)
The neatest thing: (Score:4, Funny)
CmdrTaco's HD located! (Score:2, Funny)
Looks like someone must have gotten ahold of CmdrTaco's recently discarded hard drive and recovered the links to old
You'd think Taco would have at least used some sort of freespace wiping utility!
Wierd files (Score:4, Funny)
Now when I bought it I thought it was kinda wierd...it was in like a crayola theme and had lots of kids games on it and stuff, but the guy I got it from said it was his kids. So I am about to format it, since it was full of junk and the little 2 gig hd was filled, when all of a sudden what do i discover but a c:\private\ dir!!!
So...as any good person does I formatted without looking at it. *cough*
Turns out daddy had a gay pron fetish!
After being disgusted by this, especially since it was on his KIDS computer, I formatted and lived happily ever after.
Now, if someone was to buy the laptop from me they would find plenty of straight pron on it!!!
(and i just might leave it there as a little present)
Re:Wierd files (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wierd files (Score:2, Insightful)
What do I see on old hard drives? (Score:5, Funny)
-Adam
HEHE (Score:5, Funny)
snippet & loink to original SF Gate article (Score:3, Interesting)
Discarded computer hard drives prove a trove of personal info [sfgate.com]
Re:snippet & loink to original SF Gate article (Score:2)
Dear lord, that poor bastard must've been subject to so many Simon & Garfunkel [virgin.net] jokes.
Morals? (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, that's no excuse for companies to leave sensitive data from their customers on their leftovers!
Simon
Re:Morals? (Score:2)
Except you'll never see your neighbour.
I don't see any problem in looking, it might even give you some insight into other people.
Just don't do anything bad with the data. (I'm thinking right hand and some Kleenex)
MATRIX GLITCH ! (Score:2, Funny)
(Note to moderator : this is a pityful attempt at humor, to get my karma from bad to neutral, since my first 2 posts were rated -1 and ever since I can't post that will get read, and my two other posts weren't offensive, so I deserve better).
Some things I found (Score:5, Interesting)
Oddly, the website nowadays isn't all that different
Another belonged to a rather fascinating lady who seemed to use her computer from 1994 when it was new, until 2002 when I came across it from an ebay sale. All of her writing (some published, some not), drafts, her academic work, and her photography was on there. She did quite a few nudes and not only had published work, but every photo taken in between used to create those images. Slightly giggleworthy, but really just rather tasteful nude photos.
One other I was given, a compaq 486, belonged to an organiser of some of the behind the scenes work for the Sydney Olympics - it had names, addresses and phone numbers of dozens of celebrities, politicians, and anyone involved in the marketing pre-games, along with correspondence to those people. A fun read but kind of boring - I didn't keep the addresses either.
The biggest coincidence I came across was ordering a computer from ebay, from a town about 800km from me. it came to me with a HD full of various word documents - what a surprise to find it had originally been used as a wordprocessing machine in the same building I work in, and several years before. It came home
Nothing amazingly exciting, just a few curious little moments.
Note to Mods: Clearly OT (Score:5, Funny)
Every other poster has managed to stay within the confines of this discussion, which is clearly about Duplicate stories being posted to Slashdot.
I don't think it's fair to them, or the rest of the readers, if this post doesn't get modded down to -1 Offtopic.
Re:Note to Mods: Clearly OT (Score:2)
Offtopic, but more interesting than this thread. (Score:4, Funny)
Probably why it's on BBC anyway... (Score:2, Insightful)
But I wouldn't be surprised if one of the factors for the attention BBC gives to this project is the fact that is has been on Slashdot.
Nice circle
Oh the irony.... (Score:3, Funny)
There have to be 20 dupes about the fact that this is a dupe. Of course, I'm guessing this has already been pointed out...
It's a Karma Pyramid Scheme (Score:2)
Data Mining... for BRAINS! (Score:3, Interesting)
1.) All right allready! We now have established beyond a shadow of a doubt that yes, a similar story was posted earlier this week.
2.) It amuses me that people seem to think that /. editors have so much time on their hands that all they have to do all day is read headline and forum posts. That's what moderators and metamoderators are for, and they may not catch every story that comes down the pike.
3.) Perhaps the most enjoyable "data mining" find on an old hard drive for me was over 1000 songs in MP3 format. After deleting the ones that I didn't like, there were still nearly 950 of them. They now make up the bulk of my music library.
Re:Data Mining... for BRAINS! (Score:4, Informative)
If deciding what story submissions get posted based on content and similarity to recent stories isn't an editor's job, I'd like to know what is.
Your comment about that being what mods and meta-mods are for would be true on a site like k5, but until moderators can mod stories off the front page here, that's what the editors are supposed to be for.
Re:Data Mining... for BRAINS! (Score:3, Funny)
I can't help picturing you walking into a video dating service, watching 10 tapes, and after rejecting the ones you don't like you announce you'd like to date 9 and a half of them
-
How about LANs? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cathlic Church Hard Drives (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to make this too long, but the funny part is they got pretty explicate about what he was wanting, and when I asked him if he wanted me to scratch and reinstall windows on the hard drive before I moved it over to the convent where the head Mother was going to be using it, he told me no, and I just went and installed it on here desk....God only knows how that went over?
A simple script (Score:5, Informative)
while cat garbage garbage ; do true ; done | dd bs=100k of=/dev/hdaX
You could put it on a floppy Linux distribution and sell it to windows users who want to wipe their disks .. $20 a pop!
(or better yet -- a bootable CD business card so you could include the source).
Just don't let your 5 year old nephew get hold of it -- or else!
Re:A simple script (grr) (Score:3, Informative)
should be
dd if=/dev/urandom bs=100k count=100 of=garbage
(I was sure that I'd fixed that)
Re:A simple script (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, that would work for newer desktops, but OnTrack, which sells disk wiping software (the only one I know, since that's what we use), also has a decent collection of basic SCSI drivers on their disk. You can load other drivers from a floppy if yours isn't there.
Incidentally, the US government requires triple-overwrite on any computers leaving government facilities, and for anything sensitive they wipe it, then drill holes through the disk. Yes, I know this for a fact. I have done IT work for a government site.
Re:A simple script - done the hard way! (Score:2)
My company does work for the Ministry of Defence in the UK, if we have to swap out a NIC, for example, they won't release the dead card for at least two weeks so that any residual charge dissipates, otherwise information can be gleaned from the chips on the card!
Re:A simple script - done the hard way! (Score:2)
Even after smashing it with a hammer, I wouldn't be surprised if the right people with the right equipment (tunneling scanning electron microscope possibly) could still read it. I recall a few years back some kiddy pr0n guy erased a bunch of his floppy disks with a magnet, then cut them up with scissors, and the FBI still managed to retrieve enough data to prosecute him.
Re:A simple script (Score:3, Funny)
I do hope you were joking, because I just laughed my head off, when I read it.
Just in case you weren't joking, I'll reiterate the lesson that you (should have) learned here:
My social debt being paid, this gives me flashbacks to the days of BSD 4.0 (we're talking the original BSD -- not the freeBSD, openBSD, etc). It was back at a time when a color text terminal might have been a show-stopper at Comdex. Color not being available, the BSD people decided to set up ls(1) so that, when printing to a terminal, it would run in '-F' mode -- indicating directories with a trailing /, executables with a '*' and unprintable characters with a '?'.
This was also in the early days of rogue (precursor to hack). accidently hitting the 's'ave function read-filename routine was the one part of rogue where hitting 'esc' wouldn't back you out. If you hit 'esc' 'enter', it would save your rogue session with a name of 'esc'. For wierd anti-cheat reasons, the save file was also executable.
Well one day this new grad student walks by and asks me for some help. lots of his files were missing and, whenever he explained his predicament to any knowledgable user/sysadmin type, they would literally ROTFL.
After I solemnly promised not to laugh, he explained that rogue had created this wierd file and he'd wanted to delete it. Next thing he knows, he gets a bunch of error messages and all his files are gone. Since it appeard on his screen as '*?" (escape key as name, and executable), he'd typed in
After the few seconds of silence that it took to hold down my composure, I explained to him that- *? was evaluated by the shell as a wildcard for any file with at least one character in it's name
- (this was not long after star wars) There was a unix-universe StarWars spoof making the rounds of usenet (nee netnews)
.. In 'DecWars' [pathwayjr.com], Darth Vadic was building his deadly, filesystem crunching 'arem star' (pronounced 'rm *'). This poor sod, had managed to unwittingly managed to live Vadic's dream and unleashed the full power of "the Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star". -- albeit on his own file system.
The only consolation I could give him was that he'd brightened up many sysadin's days, and he hadn't used the '-r' (rebel base?) option, so his subdirectories were safe.Not quite a duplicate ... (Score:2)
However, this part --
is not a duplicate. I think the question would better fit into the Ask Slashdot [slashdot.org] section, but oh wellPerhaps somebody was just trying to start up a discussion about things that have been left on harddrives, not about how many times we can call it a dup.
I leave all sorts on my drives (Score:2)
something interesting I found (Score:5, Funny)
"Tuesday 8th of February 1997, Tony is pissing me off today, he's already taken 4 coffee breaks, sticking me with the rest of the work, note to self report to boss. Julie is looking rather sexy today, comment to her at lunch about lovely blouse."
It got spicy here and there and read like a badly written journal, still it was great to read about the daily intricate moments that one of my ex collegues had felt.
A couple questions (Score:4, Funny)
2. Got any nice pictures of Julie?
I once repaided Garry Glitter's computer and... (Score:3, Funny)
Don't think of it as a dupe (Score:3, Funny)
"Luckily for me, my Ebay'd hard drives are safe: I only sell broken ones."
"Two MIT grad students bought used drives from eBay and secondhand computer stores.
Don't I feel inferior. I've done the same with used HD's in the past and I only have a HS edumacation."
"Your old HD is safe, I can get creditcard numbers faster on kazaa."
"Was it Pete Townshend's drive?"
"How do I destroy a HD? I just wait for my warranty to run out - it becomes unreadable shortly thereafter!"
Number 8? Number 8? Your order is up (Score:5, Funny)
Turned out the machine used to be a Kiosk machine at a deli counter at a local grocery store. There wasnt TOO much of interest on it, but there was a huge list of peoples meat and cheese orders.
The things you'll see... (Score:2, Interesting)
The first thing I found was an exchange of messages between the previous owner and a company that had shipped him a crate of mushrooms. Yes, mushrooms. Apperantly, customs has distroyed his first order and he wanted the company to ship a replacement. But it doesn't stop here.
The second thing I found was a pile of emails between the previous owner and his ex-girlfriend. Wow were they at eachothers necks. Apperantly, the previous owner was your average college drunkard and basically rapped this girl. I won't go into the specifics of it, but man, it was like watching a train wreck. I couldn't stop from reading every last juicy detail.
Anyway, that was about it... not CC# or anything like that, just sex and drugs.
From ... (Score:2)
Suggested new name for Slashdot: (Score:2)
There's a lesson here... (Score:2)
If you know somebody who's selling/giving away a computer, make sure they know that the Trash/Recycle Bin doesn't really delete anything.
Dupe filtering (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dupe filtering (Score:2)
Re:Dupe filtering (Score:2)
Re:Dupe filtering (Score:2)
Thank you for at least offering something constructive, though, instead of just saying "Taco can't spell, I mean didn't check to see if it had been posted, already!"
Also, to play the devil's advocate, I must suggest adding a meta-dupe-comment rating system be installed, so one can also assign -5 to any comment bitching about comments bitching about dupes.
Re:Dupe filtering (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wonderful (groan). The next day you'd have several thousand baffled people trying to figure out why the hell the front page is completely blank.
-
Look what my Data Mining turned up (Score:2)
C:dir
HDMINING.TXT
CMDTACO.TXT
CBYNEAL.TXT
ASCIPR0N.TXT
FLEXDISP.TXT
MSSUXORS.TXT
SDVERTSE.TXT
IHATETRL.TXT
OSXROCKS.TXT
RPOSTALL.CGI
SLASH.HTM
VOLUME SLASDT
20030023 bytes free 34789287 bytes used
C:
Data from previous owners (Score:5, Informative)
Knowing this could cause legal trouble, I quickly got on the phone and called the hospital. They said that they thought the system was clean, and that I should destroy any data on the drive. I then called my lawyer. After a small consulting fee (about $60) he informed me that I shouldn't have anything to worry about, so long as I did as the hospital asked, and destroyed all copies of the records. And I did, and that was the first time I ever felt good about losing data!
(Posting anonymously, in case any other slashdotters get any funny ideas... :)
Instead of bitchin' (Score:2, Insightful)
Sheesh, you'd think the 'nerds' would pay attention to the details. But then, you are not really nerds. Are you?
Saw 2 HP machines (Score:5, Funny)
A friend went back to claim them, this is what he ended up with:
2 HP Server class machines PIII 450Mhz good working condition once the cigarette ashes were removed.
1 DLT Tape backup
19 New tapes in wrapper and cleaning kit
Cables and other accessories.
The machines were used by a financial company. Everything worked and booted up. NT server loaded and ready....
We shut them down and wiped everything. Pretty scary actually, who knows what was on those machines!
Re:Saw 2 HP machines (Score:2)
I am not sure morals had anything to do with it. It was liability and risk to be sure. We worked in the same building as the other company did.
Either way, I know somebody very happy right now with two machines and nice DLT backup for nothing but a little work (and smell!)
That's easy (Score:5, Funny)
This story is part of a striped disk array (Score:3, Funny)
What a way to learn someone's fetishes (Score:2, Funny)
When we sorted through his equipment, not only did he have volumes of she-male pr0n, but he had been subscribed to she-male pr0n emailing lists using his company email account.
It certainly explained his freaky looking "girlfriend".
:)
A whole slew of games (Score:2)
Re:A whole slew of games (Score:2, Funny)
Me: "Where did all the disk space go?"
Co-worker: "And this new account?"
Me: "Damn! I knew we should have replaced this POS(a 2 year old install)! It's been compomised!"
Co-worker: "Here's where it went. They've got an FTP site up for trading games. It's taking up 30 gigs!"
Me: "Bastards!
Co-worker: "Actually.... yes..."
Me: "OK. Shut that account out, let's prepare to redo the system. And maybe we should archive that. You know, for evidence...."
Strangest thing found (Score:3, Funny)
Arthur Andersen (Score:2)
I picked up a half a dozen or so old Pentium computers for dirt at the Arthur Andersen asset auction in DC last year. You know, the guys who audited Enron.
I figured they'd have removed the drives. Nope! Blanked them? Nope! In several cases, the PCs' former users had left only a few megs free on the 1.2 gig drives.
Now, I wouldn't know an incriminating document if hit me in the ass. Nevertheless, if my company's books were audited by Arthur Andersen, I'd be pissed off that they didn't clear those drives.
Secure Harddisk Eraser (boot floppy, GPL) (Score:5, Insightful)
The homepage [linux-kurser.dk]
Oh yes, I've posted on this before, but that doesn't seem to matter...
securing old drives (Score:2)
I promise you, you will NOT have to worry about someone getting your data after that.
Re:securing old drives (Score:2)
Burglary Recovery! (Score:5, Interesting)
We talked a while longer, and he ended up agreeing to pay my hourly rate to look the machines over, clean them up, and wipe the drives so he could use 'em. What he had was a full-tower Pentium 166 (big stuff back then), and a smaller external drive that had a security key lock on it.
So, I vacuum the system's guts (had a ton of dust-bunnies in there), reseat the memory, and fire it up. It boots into Win95. First thing I notice is a TON of very high-end graphics-manipulation and publishing software installed, including packages like Adobe PageMaker, a full version of Acrobat, PhotoShop, etc. There was also the (then) current version of Visual Basic and Visual C (both Enterprise-class editions).
This set off some alarm bells in my head. The combined software on that system was worth at least as much as the hardware. I started digging a bit deeper. I found a couple of Word documents (yes, the system had a full version of MS Office and MS Exchange on it as well) with the name of a graphics-and-advertising company barely 30 miles away.
I called said company, and got hold of the admin assistant for the programmer who's name was all over the system. Turns out that the entirety of what that cabbie had delivered to me had all been stolen in a burglary the same day it showed up at the swap meet!
You can probably guess the rest. The cabbie, once he learned what was going on, and not wanting any trouble with the King County Sheriffs, agreed to just leave the equipment with me in return for anonymity. The system, as it turned out, belonged to one of their senior developer/programmers who, along with their system, had lost about seven years worth of intense work.
The company involved was so delighted to get everything back intact (yep, every byte of that work was recovered) that they not only paid me for my time involved in cleaning the stuff up, but they also gave me a $50.00 certificate for one of the best restaurants in town. My wife and I had a nice dinner with that one.
The moral of the story: Pay VERY close attention to what may be left on any hard drive or system you get, and follow your instincts if you're the least bit suspicious! You could end up saving someone a ton of grief and lost hours.
Re:Burglary Recovery! (Score:4, Informative)
It's an interesting story, I agree, but the real moral ought to be make backups! There's no excuse for losing years of work just because a box was stolen. Some negligent sysadmin should've been canned over that.
Can't happen in DoD (Score:4, Interesting)
Whenever a PC changed hands, the IT folks did a complete 100% wipe on the hard drive before installing an image, but not before scanning the drive for security violations. I don't know what their disposition policy was, but it's a safe bet that dead media was definitely not going to be recovered.
Safty tips for selling drives. (Score:2)
I drop it, on the floor, a few times.
Open the unit up and pour cement/paint inside.
Use a paperclip and touch random metal parts together
Soak it in water for 30 minutes
Put it in the microwave for 30 seconds
Put it in water and microwave for 30 seconds
Play football with it
Attached it to your car muffler for a day or two
Take a shower with it
Take a bath with it
Give it to a child, for a crib toy, for a week
Drop it into the shitter while taking a dump!
Use it as a freezz-bee
Put it in the mover, for a few hours, at max
I am sure you can think of more exciting way to ensure data cleaning. If so, please add to this list!!
For those lost souls using Windows XP... (Score:3, Informative)
cipher
where [path]= any location on the drive in question.
This tool doesn't delete files that are present, but simply clears space already marked as "empty". It was included to augment the functionality of EFS. If you encrypt a file, you don't want vestiges of the file from before you encrypted it lingering.
From the My-God-Will-Ya'll-Quit-Bitchin'-Dept (Score:4, Insightful)
Get outside, breathe the fresh air, and quit trying to come up with clever quotes that express your angst over a duplicate/semi-duplicate story.</RANT>
SET MODE KarmaTracking=ON
SET MODE ModeratorSuckup=ON
Re:From the My-God-Will-Ya'll-Quit-Bitchin'-Dept (Score:2)
If the writeup had at least made reference to the older story and made clear that this thread is supposed to be about interesting data found on "old" harddrives, then I would agree with you. But from the post it sounds like CmdrTaco hasn't even checked from last week to ensure that this isn't a duplicate.
This is their job. They are trying to get people to support them through subscriptions. Before I'd subscribe, I'd have to see some kind of perfessionalism. To be perfectly honest, the only reason I stick around Slashdot is not because of the editors but because of the community already here. Without the community, I wouldn't bother reading, because it wouldn't be worth reading. Posting dupes and generally not checking the stories they are posting make it seem like the editors don't care about the site anymore and make the community feel like they're being neglected.
Don't forget, a lot of the original very vocal Slashdotters already moved [kuro5hin.org] to another community. The lack of professionalism on the part of the editors is annoying and a slap in the face of the people for who the site is run. It would be very nice to have the editors explain that they are at the very least doing something to try and prevent duplicates. As things stand, it seems that the editors aren't listening to the community and are just ignoring us.
(Mind you - this goes both ways. It seems that a vocal group of Slashdotters feel that the editors "owe" the posters, while the editors seem to feel that the posters "owe" the Slashdot crew. Neither is true. Slashdot as we know it needs both. Without either, it would be nothing. "Slashdot" owes both the community and the editors for its existance.)
That's why you see people complaining about dupes. It let's them vent steam and hopefully get a message to the editors that they want change and hope that the editors will pay more attention and hopefully admit that they can screw up. The fact that they're getting modded up indicates that there are many people who agree with them. In this case, I feel that the bitching is justified.
Re:You are in a maze of twisty little stories... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Well, a text search of the slashdot archive for "MIT grad students buying old hard drives on Ebay" or something similar might have revealed that this story has already been posted.
Unless, of course, Taco dd'ed over the archive...
Re:solution to this (Score:2)
cat
With DV editing or tv capture cards, it's even easier.
Re:solution to this (Score:2, Funny)
Re:from criminal defense law firm (Score:2)
I suggest you try it out.
Re:Speaking of all this data recovery (Score:2)