A number of shredders are setup for CD/DVD shredding; my $70 Fellows is a good example. There is a separate slot above the paper slot that is intended for optical media. I hardly ever burn anything sensitive to optical media but I have tested this function out and it works as advertised. The forensic team where I work will cut up hard disk platters with metal snips--works very well. Matt On Tue, May 18, 2010 17:20, Brent Harding wrote:
That might be better than microwaving CD's. I just thought that most of them say you shouldn't put credit cards, CD's etc in, but I know of a friend who tried just about anything in there you could fit. I'm not sure if his shredder works any more, but it's cheaper than a microwave if it went bad one day. I don't see needing to shred a lot of disks, just certain ones once in awhile. Maybe external drives that I'd reuse are better for the backups, but blu ray looks attractive if the cost goes down, at 50 gigs a disk, I'd only need 6 to back up the whole internal, but I'm sure I'll buy a bigger drive before that gets cheap.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg B." <gbobo@woh.rr.com> To: "'Blind sysadmins list'" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 1:13 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format.
I just thought I would add my 2 cents. For destroying DVD's and CD's, I use a cross-cut shredder that has capacity for shredding 12 pages at once. When a DVD or CD has gone to the shredder it comes out as small pieces of confetti and the confetti is divided up and thrown out in different trash bags if necessary. As for hard drives use various tools to format it several times and if I need to destroy it I have found a hammer works real good.
Greg B.
-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Brent Harding Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 12:58 PM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format.
What about the microwave that's supposedly effective on CD's? I thought of adopting it as my way of choice to destroy disks with data on them I don't need any more, say I back up to DVD some day and don't want my whole system basically in the dumpster for anyone to take, mic the old one for 10 seconds
and make a new one. There, one would probably want to keep at least one or two older in case one of them failed without you knowing, but at some point you can't keep everything. Another candidate for the mic would be those disks you can request from Social Security with your notices in Word files, they have your SSN on I'm sure, and they give you a print copy with it, but it comes a time when they aren't relevant any more. Is it safe to just zap these disks for 10 seconds in the mic, maybe test them to make sure they're toast, and be safe? Will it wreck the microwave? I haven't had to get rid of
an old hard drive yet, so not sure it'd be effective there. I'd think there has to be a better way to destroy CD's than busting them in half and cutting
yourself, maybe I found it but I'm afraid to try it much.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Granados" <scott@granados-llc.net> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org>; <matt.bsa@wh1t3.net> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 10:10 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format.
The shot gun won't work (perfectly) you need something more like a grinding tool to turn the platter in to fine dust (preferably not of uniform size).
----- Original Message ----- From: "John G. Heim" <jheim@math.wisc.edu> To: <matt.bsa@wh1t3.net>; "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 7:27 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format.
The last time I saw this topic on a linux discussion list, the recommendation was to take the platter out and shoot it with a shotgun. According to the guy who wrote the post, it had the advantage of requiring no special tools. As if everyone has a shotgun.
Anyway, Ibraam asked how to destroy a drive so that even the military couldn't recover the data. I think its important to point out that only the military would know that for sure and they're not likely to say. So if you really want to be as sure as you can be, I'd first wipe the drive with dd and then also severely physically damage the platter with something like a shotgun, hammer, blow torch, or hacksaw.
Linux also has a wipe command that does a more scientific job of wiping a disk than the dd command I gave earlier. If you're not worried about the CIA getting ahold of your drive, I think using wipe or just doing the dd command a few times will be sufficient. If you're just selling a drive on ebay, you can use wipe or dd.
----- Original Message ----- From: "White, Matt" <matt.bsa@wh1t3.net> To: <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 8:47 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format.
I do not believe that DD will address the reserve block area of the drive; the OS is not aware of this area (this is true of Linux as well as Windows).
The best way to wipe a drive permanently is to cut up the platters--physically destroy the drive. Check out this PDF for more information on levels of data destruction.
+http://cmr r.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/CmrrSecureEraseProtocols.pdf
On Tue, May 18, 2010 09:22, John G. Heim wrote:
I do not know. Where is that information kept?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Mustill-Rose" <bmustillrose@gmail.com> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 3:38 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] data format.
Thanks for this John, considder this linux newbe enlightened.
Would you happen to know if this command ignores feedback from the drive in regards to what blocks are considdered bad or not? Each drive has a g list containing a list of bad blocks, which are more often than not invisible to the end user or any software unless they start issuing ata commands to the drive to expose it. The problem being is that some formatting programs also skip these bad blocks, when in actual fact, they can still contain data.
Ben.
On 18/05/2010, John G. Heim <jheim@math.wisc.edu> wrote:
This is a frequently asked question on linux lists. It usually generates quite a bit of debate because the military doesn't usually tell people what they can do so you can only speculate on what it would take to destroy the data so that even the military can't recover it. Certainly, if you destroy the platter physically by doing something like hitting it with a hammer, that should do it.
But most people believe that just wiping the disk a dozen or so times will do it. You can do that with the dd command lie this:
Dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda
That's if your disk is a sata drive. For IDE drives, the command would be:
Dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/had
Those commands write random digits over the entire drive, wiping out the boot sector, partition table, and all data. You would have to do that several times because the read/write heads might not line up exactly right to destroy every single bit if you do it just once.
-----Original Message----- .From: "Ibraam Wahib"<ibraam.wahib@gmail.com> .Sent: 5/17/10 4:38:19 AM .To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> .Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] data format. . .hello friends: .need quick help please, .how can I format a hard disk which can not be recovered forever by any means? )data destroyed( .the hard was have windows format then formatted and now have Linux, I need to delete all partitions and delete any data to be unusable anymore even via military means. .can we do this? .for further information contact me off list. .thanks .ibraam ._______________________________________________ .Blind-sysadmins mailing list .Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org .http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins .
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins