Can you degauss your drives before sending them in for failing under warranty?

[episodic]

To clear data off of a drive before sending it in under a failure during warranty, can you simply degauss it? If not, then what?

 

[gistech1978]

Originally posted by: episodic
To clear data off of a drive before sending it in under a failure during warranty, can you simply degauss it? If not, then what?

then you send it in and realize that the techs have more important things to do than go over every bit of data on a given hard drive.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: gistech1978

Originally posted by: episodic
To clear data off of a drive before sending it in under a failure during warranty, can you simply degauss it? If not, then what?

then you send it in and realize that the techs have more important things to do than go over every bit of data on a given hard drive.

WinnAr.

- M4H

 

[Bassyhead]

unnecessary

 

[GoingUp]

I thought degaussing was only for monitors? In any case, I would do my best to erase the drive before sending it in.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

For the paranoid...
For the even more paranoid...

 

[PingSpike]

You might just want to eat the loss of the drive if its loaded with child porn, pervo.

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
You might just want to eat the loss of the drive if its loaded with child porn, pervo.

That was uncalled for. You don't keep financial records and such on your computer? Sheesh. Most businesses wipe their drives before selling/getting rid of them too. . .

 

[Ogg]

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: PingSpike
You might just want to eat the loss of the drive if its loaded with child porn, pervo.

That was uncalled for. You don't keep financial records and such on your computer? Sheesh. Most businesses wipe their drives before selling/getting rid of them too. . .

I believe thats called a "joke" episodic
Good one pingspike!!!!!!!!!:beer:

 

[Armitage]

I keep enough sensitive/personal information on my drives (tax records, bank statements, etc.) that I'll probably just eat the $60-$100 loss if it's not alive enough to wipe. It's very unlikely that you'll have a problem, but then, identity theft is a huge PITA to recover from.

You can get service contracts that don't require you to produce the failed drive. Do it all the time for classified work. Had one vendor that required you to send back the drive shell sans disks.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: PingSpike
You might just want to eat the loss of the drive if its loaded with child porn, pervo.

That was uncalled for. You don't keep financial records and such on your computer? Sheesh. Most businesses wipe their drives before selling/getting rid of them too. . .

Ogg already took my response. Do you post on ATOT much?

 

[episodic]

There is a good article about this now on Slashdot that got me to thinking about this in the first place where they found passwords and such in plain text in swap files and stuff. That is what precipiated the question to begin with I'm not paranoid till I read something that makes me that way . . .

Need to get off the puter and go outside

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: PingSpike
You might just want to eat the loss of the drive if its loaded with child porn, pervo.

That was uncalled for. You don't keep financial records and such on your computer? Sheesh. Most businesses wipe their drives before selling/getting rid of them too. . .

Ogg already took my response. Do you post on ATOT much?

Ahh, sheesh - my bad
Not enough sleep I suppose.




No not much only 1300 posts in 5 months

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: Armitage
I keep enough sensitive/personal information on my drives (tax records, bank statements, etc.) that I'll probably just eat the $60-$100 loss if it's not alive enough to wipe. It's very unlikely that you'll have a problem, but then, identity theft is a huge PITA to recover from.

You can get service contracts that don't require you to produce the failed drive. Do it all the time for classified work. Had one vendor that required you to send back the drive shell sans disks.

I had a check book stolen out of a car when I was 18 (a smash n grab). To this day I can not write a check at a walmart. I've tried to straighten it out several times, and it is just unbelievable the hoops I had to jump through.

They wrote 2 grand's worth of checks in a week.

About 2 years ago, I had someone order 300$ worth of tenni shoes in my same town using my debit card/credit card #. I still have no idea how they got that. They were pretty dumb though as I called the company, got their actual address and telephone # and had it taken care of through the law.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: PingSpike
You might just want to eat the loss of the drive if its loaded with child porn, pervo.

That was uncalled for. You don't keep financial records and such on your computer? Sheesh. Most businesses wipe their drives before selling/getting rid of them too. . .

Ogg already took my response. Do you post on ATOT much?

Ahh, sheesh - my bad
Not enough sleep I suppose.




No not much only 1300 posts in 5 months

Heh. NP.

I don't really keep any finacial records on my PC or anything that would be useful to steal my identity with. In fact, I think windows is registered under 'baron von jackass' still.

If I did, I would invest in one of these. That way it doesn't matter, because you couldn't read the disk if it worked without the key.

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: PingSpike
You might just want to eat the loss of the drive if its loaded with child porn, pervo.

That was uncalled for. You don't keep financial records and such on your computer? Sheesh. Most businesses wipe their drives before selling/getting rid of them too. . .

Ogg already took my response. Do you post on ATOT much?

Ahh, sheesh - my bad
Not enough sleep I suppose.




No not much only 1300 posts in 5 months

Heh. NP.

I don't really keep any finacial records on my PC or anything that would be useful to steal my identity with. In fact, I think windows is registered under 'baron von jackass' still.

If I did, I would invest in one of these. That way it doesn't matter, because you couldn't read the disk if it worked without the key.

I've never seen one of these. That is very interesting - not very hight priced either.

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: episodic
I've never seen one of these. That is very interesting - not very hight priced either.

Thanks for the heads up.

I don't know anyone who has used one personally, but I've been told that they don't slow down the data transfer because they have their own processor that handles the encryption on the fly. I think its only 48-bit encryption, but thats probably more than enough to deter most sane theives. Seems like a pretty cool little gadget for only $30.

 

[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: episodic
I've never seen one of these. That is very interesting - not very hight priced either.

Thanks for the heads up.

I don't know anyone who has used one personally, but I've been told that they don't slow down the data transfer because they have their own processor that handles the encryption on the fly. I think its only 48-bit encryption, but thats probably more than enough to deter most sane theives. Seems like a pretty cool little gadget for only $30.

I concur

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: episodic
I've never seen one of these. That is very interesting - not very hight priced either.

Thanks for the heads up.

I don't know anyone who has used one personally, but I've been told that they don't slow down the data transfer because they have their own processor that handles the encryption on the fly. I think its only 48-bit encryption, but thats probably more than enough to deter most sane theives. Seems like a pretty cool little gadget for only $30.

Wow ... very cool. Never heard of it. Wonder if there are any reviews out there.
And yea, 48 bit isn't much, but likely enough to deter most crooks.

 

[Armitage]

More information from Abit
Apparently this comes built in to some of their motherboards as well.

One downside ... if the system is booted up with the key inserted, the drive is unencrypted, so a cracker would have access to it. Compared to software based encryption, where if you haven't entered your password, the volume is still encrypted, even if their is an attacker on your system.

I wonder if you could unmount the drive, remove the key, and then replace the key and remount the drive without rebooting the system?

 

[goblue420]

Originally posted by: Armitage
More information from Abit
Apparently this comes built in to some of their motherboards as well.

One downside ... if the system is booted up with the key inserted, the drive is unencrypted, so a cracker would have access to it. Compared to software based encryption, where if you haven't entered your password, the volume is still encrypted, even if their is an attacker on your system.

I wonder if you could unmount the drive, remove the key, and then replace the key and remount the drive without rebooting the system?

interesting device...