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From: Bella Jones on 6 Apr 2010 10:35
Preparing to send my iffy RAID maxtor/Seagate back, I am erasing it,
having decanted stuff i want to keep. I set it to do seven times
overwrite, but it's going to take two and a half days. So I then set it
to just zeroes, which has taken around eight hours.

Is this really enough?



--
bellajonez at yahoo dot co dot uk
From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 6 Apr 2010 10:41
On Tue, 6 Apr 2010 15:35:30 +0100, me9(a)privacy.net (Bella Jones)
wrote:

>Preparing to send my iffy RAID maxtor/Seagate back, I am erasing it,
>having decanted stuff i want to keep. I set it to do seven times
>overwrite, but it's going to take two and a half days. So I then set it
>to just zeroes, which has taken around eight hours.
>
>Is this really enough?

For the *working* drive that you're writing zeros on, data recovery is
night impossible these days. Once you've zeroed it, it takes very
specialist kit to have any chance of reading the overwritten data by
looking around the edges of the bit regions to find what used to be
there - and with a 500gig drive, the data density is such that the
leaked edge remnants of your old 0s and 1s are also fudged by the
leaked edge remnants of the 0s and 1s on the neighbouring tracks. So
don't worry about that one too much.

But the dead drive will still have a full mirror of all your data on
it, so there's really no point doing any more - if you expect someone
to actually take an interest, your best bet is to smash the device up
with a hammer and then buy a new one.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
There are no normal people--only people you don't know very much about.
-- Nancy Lebovitz, rasfw
From: Bella Jones on 6 Apr 2010 11:27
Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 6 Apr 2010 15:35:30 +0100, me9(a)privacy.net (Bella Jones)
> wrote:
>
> >Preparing to send my iffy RAID maxtor/Seagate back, I am erasing it,
> >having decanted stuff i want to keep. I set it to do seven times
> >overwrite, but it's going to take two and a half days. So I then set it
> >to just zeroes, which has taken around eight hours.
> >
> >Is this really enough?
>
> For the *working* drive that you're writing zeros on, data recovery is
> night impossible these days. Once you've zeroed it, it takes very
> specialist kit to have any chance of reading the overwritten data by
> looking around the edges of the bit regions to find what used to be
> there - and with a 500gig drive, the data density is such that the
> leaked edge remnants of your old 0s and 1s are also fudged by the
> leaked edge remnants of the 0s and 1s on the neighbouring tracks. So
> don't worry about that one too much.
>
> But the dead drive will still have a full mirror of all your data on
> it, so there's really no point doing any more - if you expect someone
> to actually take an interest, your best bet is to smash the device up
> with a hammer and then buy a new one.

Ah, ok... This RAID thing is a mixed blessing, innit. How do you trust
them not to scan and look for stuff?


--
bellajonez at yahoo dot co dot uk
From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 6 Apr 2010 11:58
On Tue, 6 Apr 2010 16:27:35 +0100, me9(a)privacy.net (Bella Jones)
wrote:

>Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 6 Apr 2010 15:35:30 +0100, me9(a)privacy.net (Bella Jones)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Preparing to send my iffy RAID maxtor/Seagate back, I am erasing it,
>> >having decanted stuff i want to keep. I set it to do seven times
>> >overwrite, but it's going to take two and a half days. So I then set it
>> >to just zeroes, which has taken around eight hours.
>> >
>> >Is this really enough?
>>
[snip]
>> But the dead drive will still have a full mirror of all your data on
>> it, so there's really no point doing any more - if you expect someone
>> to actually take an interest, your best bet is to smash the device up
>> with a hammer and then buy a new one.
>
>Ah, ok... This RAID thing is a mixed blessing, innit.

Usually you'd replace the dead drive yourself and then take a hammer
to it, job done. That's how my own RAID kit works.

>How do you trust
>them not to scan and look for stuff?

Quantity, protocol and apathy.

First, the RMA department gets hundred of drives a day to check,
return or replace, and bin.
Second, data protection laws and the potential for monstrous corporate
embarassment will result in very tight check-in, check-out procedures
for handling RMAs.
Third, people are lazy.

Depending on what actually went wrong on your dead drive, it's either
a case of replacing the mainboard (relatively easy but they'd need
stock of the right one) or transferring the platters into a different
similar drive mechanism (relatively tricky and they'd need stock).
Either of those takes time. Spare parts stock is likely not available
at the RMA depot, just a simple test harness.

But even if someone managed to refurbish your disk, scanning through
to find your tax returns and emails and whatnot takes all day so would
surely have to be done off-site. Tech companies take very dim views of
people who wander off with stock...

Still, it's a numbers game at the end. The odds are very good that
no-one will find your collection of My Little Pony pictures.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
The advantage of a bad memory is that one can enjoy the
same good things for the first time several times. -- Nietzsche
From: Graham J on 6 Apr 2010 12:47

"Jaimie Vandenbergh" <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote in message
news:g0mmr5d2nbi5hpkb690mhh8dgs0gnqvbcj(a)4ax.com...
> On Tue, 6 Apr 2010 16:27:35 +0100, me9(a)privacy.net (Bella Jones)
> wrote:
>
>>Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 6 Apr 2010 15:35:30 +0100, me9(a)privacy.net (Bella Jones)
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> >Preparing to send my iffy RAID maxtor/Seagate back, I am erasing it,
>>> >having decanted stuff i want to keep. I set it to do seven times
>>> >overwrite, but it's going to take two and a half days. So I then set it
>>> >to just zeroes, which has taken around eight hours.
>>> >
>>> >Is this really enough?
>>>
> [snip]
>>> But the dead drive will still have a full mirror of all your data on
>>> it, so there's really no point doing any more - if you expect someone
>>> to actually take an interest, your best bet is to smash the device up
>>> with a hammer and then buy a new one.
>>
>>Ah, ok... This RAID thing is a mixed blessing, innit.
>
> Usually you'd replace the dead drive yourself and then take a hammer
> to it, job done. That's how my own RAID kit works.
>
>>How do you trust
>>them not to scan and look for stuff?
>
> Quantity, protocol and apathy.
[snip]

Unless of course you are of interest to the people at GCHQ in which case
even using a computer would be a risk you should not take ...

--
Graham J



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