be careful when disposing of old laptops/pcs

[LeroyPatrol]

I recently sold a Lenovo Yoga that got wet. I got a quote for a repair and they said main board was required at a cost that was $100 less than what I paid! It sat in the drawer for over 12mths. I decided it was time to get rid of it. I put it on ebay because the screen is fine. The buyer contacted me earlier and asked if I backed up the hard disk. I thought wtf it's a solid state and though it would have been on the main board. Apparently not. I've been frantically changing passwords for everything today. But nice of him to offer to recover stuff!!

[SS Dave]

I would not sell or pass on any device without removing any trace I was there. Even when I disposed of some old desk top machines I removed the hard disks.

But a good tip for the unwary.

SS Dave

[bob_m_54]

Quite a few years back I bought a couple of old PCs (486 days) and HDDs from the auctions, as I was doing a network admins course at tech, and wanted to practice setting up different configs with 5 separate computers. One of the comps was an old police asset computer, and another was from a firm of solicitors. It was amazing what was able to be read after Unformat, and Undelete.

[LeroyPatrol]

I would not sell or pass on any device without removing any trace I was there. Even when I disposed of some old desk top machines I removed the hard disks.

But a good tip for the unwary.

SS Dave

I'm usually very careful and have a drawer full of my old hd's as I know you can recover info even after a format as bob_m_54 mentioned above!!
I made an incorrect assumption. I was going to just keep it like all the other HD's I have just in case but thought nah it will be stuffed as it's on the main board and I'd be fine! Wrong!!

[Onefella]

Have been using for decades to make HDDs safe for sale. IT does SSD drives as well.

Years ago I had to permanently destroy a bunch of HDDs from a law firm. The firm wanted proof of physical destruction, so I put the drives on a concrete floor and drove the pointy end of a 2m crowbar through the platters. Customers were satisfied after seeing the results.

[lsemmens]

A solid state drive is just a component like any other hard drive, can be unplugged and plugged in like any other drive.

[Al Bundy]

Have been using for decades to make HDDs safe for sale. IT does SSD drives as well.

Years ago I had to permanently destroy a bunch of HDDs from a law firm. The firm wanted proof of physical destruction, so I put the drives on a concrete floor and drove the pointy end of a 2m crowbar through the platters. Customers were satisfied after seeing the results.

It actually doesn't guarantee or offer secure data erasure from SSD's , for SSD's I would suggest the proprietary Software from manufacturers of the particular SSD, i.e. for Seagate you can use Seagate Tools, for Samsung use Samsung Magician and for WD and Sandisk you can use WD SSD Dashboard, links are below;

[ol' boy]

I guess i'm like a lot of people here, have a serious collection of old computers and phones and sat boxes
Not a single one has been sold.
It would take days to remove all the HDD now....
So i think a sledge hammer and fire drum will be the place.

But a good subject regardless............

Here is a classic example
Last week i re posted in the Bit Coin section regarding todays price
2 years ago i had a mate withdraw $400,000 from his home loan to buy BitCoin (without his wives knowledge), 2 weeks after he bought them, they crashed
A month after that he took his life, leaving a Wife and 3 young boys under 12 years old....
I was friends with his Wife prior to them meeting.....

2 weeks ago i messaged her asking does she still have his laptop!
Her reply, "Yes i do and you would be the 10th person to ask in recent time".

She is not interested in the money or the BitCoin at all, doesn't want to know about them.
(There is a bit more to the story that is not important to share here)
But would have been interesting had she sold that laptop.


Another is an old GF that used to manage a lot of Australian Actors, Actresses, Comedians
She was so professional, very respectful to her clients privacy.
Then goes and sells he work server to someone without deleting a single thing on it......
She tells me she got a new server, i asked where the old one went (thinking i might use it) she tells me its gone, the guy took it, she didn't want it...
Serious, some people are astonishingly stupid at times.

[LeroyPatrol]

I didn't think I was being stupid

[ol' boy]

I didn't say you were... unless you gave away a server with all your clients personal details on it from a Talent Agency?

[LeroyPatrol]

no no that's me saying I'm stupid. I should have known better. I just hope the guy the the right thing and formats the drive.

[ltdslip]

Had a couple of dead usb hdd's, took them to a mates farm & used them for target practice.

[shred]

I used to have a large client in the medical industry. Any old computer hard disks had to be disposed of by doing a secure erase (like with DBAN, mentioned above), then running a power drill through the disk platter in at least three places. Quick, easy to do and renders the drive unreadable.

The modern SSD drives represent a bigger problem though. SSDs wear out as they are written to. This doesn't matter much with a cheap throw away USB drive, but it becomes a significant problem at the enterprise level, where SSDs are used to store large databases and other write-intensive applications. The manufacturers get around this with "wear leveling". The disk is over-provisioned, so your SSD with 512GB usable space, might actually contain 2TB of memory. Data is then moved around to eliminate any hot spots and spread the write activity across the entire drive. This significantly prolongs the life of the storage device, but it means DBAN and other similar utilities cannot access the entire device to secure erase it. Hence, Al Bundy's tip re using the manufacturer's recommended secure erase tools above is excellent advice.

A better approach with modern laptops and desktops is to apply whole of disk encryption, like Microsoft's BitLocker. It's fairly unobtrusive, doesn't make much difference to performance and means that even if the computer is stolen, the thief can't recover anything. It also covers you if a disk fails and is replaced under warranty.

[mi_tasol]

1/2 inch drill bit does the job every time!

[george65]

I worked with a company some years ago that was getting old gubbermint dept computers and refurbishing them and on selling them.
The police not only removed the HDDs, they removed the RAM as well.
Apparently they thought that it might be possible to get info out of that and they didn't want any of their data getting around. Sounded far fetched to me, but.......

I have bought loads of computers ( like 30 at a time) from auctions and places handling used computer gear and found all sorts of stuff on it.
A funny one was obviously from a private guy that was very religious..... and into some very distasteful porn as well he had hidden in folders usually reserved for the OS.

[Uncle Fester]

no no that's me saying I'm stupid. I should have known better. I just hope the guy the the right thing and formats the drive.

That won't help.
I will 'unformat' it

Even these days, 99% of people using computers still don't know that files don't get deleted only the direct access to them is removed but they can still be indirectly accessed.
Files on SSD don't get deleted at all even if you use Bleachbit or other 'secure' wiping methods. The ENTIRE disk needs to overwritten with random data and all the blocks completely filled, which is not possible if there is still existing data on them.
Many are not aware that smaller files do not fill complete blocks and what is left over from before overwriting them it is still available.
This results in fragmented images and incomplete text files but often enough to get you screwed if it is sensitive information.
This makes SSD even more a security risk and they should always be encrypted but most people don't do that.

[george65]

I have no idea how it works but was just thinking of the times I have run recovery programs on Compact flash cards out of Digital camera's when accidentaly formatted or erased.
You have have say a 32 Gb card but pull twice as much as that or more files from way back off the card.

I guess the same could be done on HDDS, Even though they were deleted or formatted, there is still probably so much stuff there it does not matter.

[VroomVroom]

does this disposal issue also apply to mobile phones ? are files able to be accessed from a formatted second hand phone? When i left the last company they only asked me for the sim card back , not the phone. I sold the phone to someone else and formatted it prior. Next time i'll just chuck it in the bin

[Uncle Fester]

does this disposal issue also apply to mobile phones ? are files able to be accessed from a formatted second hand phone? When i left the last company they only asked me for the sim card back , not the phone. I sold the phone to someone else and formatted it prior. Next time i'll just chuck it in the bin

While I haven't personally recovered phone data after factory reset, I would say YES based on all the applications available that claim to be able to do it and I don't see any reason why not.
A factory reset goes much to fast to be able to completely overwrite the entire phone storage in the process.

I would recommend the application of a hammer before chucking it in the bin although I am more an angle grinder type of guy

In any case please wear safety goggles..

[enf]

Get some electrical wire. Wrap it around the device in a coil. Connect to a battery.