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Lalo

Public range to shoot hard drives

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Would be fun to shoot 'em up. But, I just let 3 or 4 at a time stack up in the garage, then grab a beer, take them apart and remove the platters. Scrap the rest. I have a couple dozen platters sitting on the shelf now just waiting for the opportunity to either throw them in a camp fire or shoot them up.

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Would be fun to shoot 'em up. But, I just let 3 or 4 at a time stack up in the garage, then grab a beer, take them apart and remove the platters. Scrap the rest. I have a couple dozen platters sitting on the shelf now just waiting for the opportunity to either throw them in a camp fire or shoot them up.

  

 

Ditto. I love taking these things apart down to the platters. Also like taking the magnets off and using them for things. Always funny when I ask someone who's never seen them to take them apart and can't. Then they end up pinching their fingers and getting annoyed. I think I still have the very first magnet I pulled apart back in the late 90s as a keychain in my garage.

 

You don't need a drill press. Put them on a 2x4 and use a hand drill. That's what we do at my office.

Definitely don't need a drill press, just faster when you have one.

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Wait, scratching head. Why not just hard format them or mag them and use them for backups or give them to your friends?

 

 

Sent from my iPad 2 using T2 Pro

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Wait, scratching head. Why not just hard format them or mag them and use them for backups or give them to your friends?

 

 

Sent from my iPad 2 using T2 Pro

 

Precisely..... Gibbs Rule #5 - "You don't waste good."  :)

 

I have software that will wipe the drive to DOD standards with several passes. 

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2x reasons

 

1. Company policy due to the nature of the customer data once held in those drives

2. Not sure if most people will find hard drives under 1GB very useful nowadays

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Wait, scratching head. Why not just hard format them or mag them and use them for backups or give them to your friends?

 

 

Sent from my iPad 2 using T2 Pro

Most places don't have access to a magnetic source string enough to actually wipe them.

 

Some places don't accept dod wipes, they have policy that they must be destroyed. The hip secure disposal method these days is shredding them.

 

Practically speaking, dod wipes don't cut it when you use stuff until it fails because you can't perform the wipe on broken hardware, and you can't verify it's broken enough the data is gone. It's the answer to why not reuse it. When you reuse it and then it fails, how do you make sure the data is gone? When the on board controller goes, and you don't have a spare, but can't guarantee a recovery place doesn't, how do you make it safe to dispose of? You destroy it physically.

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2x reasons

 

1. Company policy due to the nature of the customer data once held in those drives

2. Not sure if most people will find hard drives under 1GB very useful nowadays

 

And, like you said, most are IDEs.    If it's company policy, then that's that.  They paid for 'em.... they can do what they wish. :dontknow:

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Most places don't have access to a magnetic source string enough to actually wipe them.

 

Some places don't accept dod wipes, they have policy that they must be destroyed. The hip secure disposal method these days is shredding them.

 

Practically speaking, dod wipes don't cut it when you use stuff until it fails because you can't perform the wipe on broken hardware, and you can't verify it's broken enough the data is gone. It's the answer to why not reuse it. When you reuse it and then it fails, how do you make sure the data is gone? When the on board controller goes, and you don't have a spare, but can't guarantee a recovery place doesn't, how do you make it safe to dispose of? You destroy it physically.

 

Well, physical destruction (shredding) would certainly offer a 100% guarantee of success. But what a waste.... I guess I come from a time where physical destruction was on the other side of the "cost/benefit" calculation. It seems cheap enough these days, especially on some of the lower GB drives, as Lalo points out.

 

And, you're right about physical failure inhibiting a software DOD wipe. In that case, I would physically destroy, if the data stored on it called for that.

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Yep - some compliance rules say that the hard drives have to be destroyed as well.  SEC Compliance is a bitch.

 

Then I guess I'm glad I got out when I did... :)   I wonder what the requirements are for those large HDAs that make up EMC type SAN/SRDF arrays or large NFS/NAS arrays?

 

Then again, I guess a lot of smaller firms are going to cloud storage to avoid those costs, but I'd think that SEC regs (if not common sense or company policy) would prohibit any sensitive data from being stored there (on "public" clouds anyway and certainly not without encryption)...  But even with centralized storage (and the move away from local workstations having larger storage capacity), there are always end users that have "their own little Access etc. database" tucked away locally on that HD, and don't want to give it up.  Those are the real dangerous folks.

 

You'd also think there would be pressure on the HD manufacturers to make cheaper, "disposable" PC HDs, given the requirements to destroy them, but again there's that cost vs. reliability/benefit balance... Reliability, of course, being the priority... :dontknow:

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Ok, I get it.

I have an Area-51 machines that holds like 10 drives. When I get some reformatted drives, I shove them in for media server drives.

 

But if the rule is total destruction, how they trusting you to destroy them at a range? ;)

 

 

Sent from my iPad 2 using T2 Pro

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   I wonder what the requirements are for those large HDAs that make up EMC type SAN/SRDF arrays or large NFS/NAS arrays?

 

 

Same. Actually a lot of the large arrays end up using fairly small high speed drives for performance. At my place we are just now starting to trust 1T drives for performance. We do use 3T or so drives for backups and DR. Thing is they are no "bigger" then a desktop drive, a shredder doesn't care.

 

It does get a bit more odd though, because when you have 30 or 60 spindles in the same RAID recovering meaningful data a single drive gets strange, but no matter you treat them the same.  Tier 1 storage also no includes at rest data encryption as well.

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Same. Actually a lot of the large arrays end up using fairly small high speed drives for performance. At my place we are just now starting to trust 1T drives for performance. We do use 3T or so drives for backups and DR. Thing is they are no "bigger" then a desktop drive, a shredder doesn't care.

 

It does get a bit more odd though, because when you have 30 or 60 spindles in the same RAID recovering meaningful data a single drive gets strange, but no matter you treat them the same.  Tier 1 storage also no includes at rest data encryption as well.

 

RAID 0 (for performance), I assume, or can you do RAID 1 or RAID 10 (for a little more security)?

 

Back when I first started on Wall St. in the late 90's,  EMC had these huge "refrigerator sized" array boxes for SAN (I forget what they were called) that stored HDAs the size of the old mainframe multi-plattered "disk packs."  They were incredibly expensive. I was just wondering what the SEC requirements would be for destruction of those things, although maybe market forces have driven them all out of existence, by now. This was back in the days of the SUN "Sparc10"  workstation and/or the SUN "Sunfire V880/V1280" server(s).

 

Seems like things have evolved for the better... :)

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Even if you put bullets into them, someone who is very skilled and determined can still retrieve data from damaged hard drives.

True but the OP said he already wiped them.  if he used DBAN (or something similar) to wipe the drives and then hit them with some 7.62x39 there isn't going to be anything left to recover

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So it looks like ranges like these are hard to come by in NJ. Just like open public ranges that let you setup your own run and gun scenarios. Looks like I'll be expanding my search to Eastern PA. Not looking to do this at a range where it isn't explicitly allowed. Also would like a range that allows the use of .223/5.56 rounds for this.

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Lalo, I have over 200 plus drives sitting in my office... I was wondering what the hell to do with them... We are also obligated to destroy as per company policy due to customer data on them. Most of the drives are 40-200mb.. I also have piles of 1 and 2gb PC-100 memory stick.

It is sad that none of this has any real value... I had a tough time getting the cases scrapped as well... Most places wanted to charge me..... I finally found a guy with a pickup who would take them away to scrap at no charge.

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Lalo, I have over 200 plus drives sitting in my office... I was wondering what the hell to do with them... We are also obligated to destroy as per company policy due to customer data on them. Most of the drives are 40-200mb.. I also have piles of 1 and 2gb PC-100 memory stick.

It is sad that none of this has any real value... I had a tough time getting the cases scrapped as well... Most places wanted to charge me..... I finally found a guy with a pickup who would take them away to scrap at no charge.

 

Yeah, it's not worth the time/effort to try and DOD wipe these. Physical destruction is the best alternative. Maybe you could "degauss" them, but that's not guaranteed either. Industrial strength shredder is the answer.

 

When you say "case," do you mean the whole "desktop" case, or the HD case (i.e. remove just the platter assemblies)? I buy generic desktop cases so all I have to do is replace the guts. I might also have to replace the LED switch lights, etc. on occasion, but...  I was thinking it might make it easier on the "shredding" if the platter assemblies were removed and shredded separately. Sort of like taking an HD Floppy, breaking it apart, and shredding the thin micro film disk portion. 

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I was thinking about loading up the BBQ grill with 15-20 drive at at time... What do you thing... 30 minutes at 475. I like my drives blackened in the outside and cherry red on the inside.

I wouldn't burn them like that. I'm sure way to many fumes woild be released

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I received this email today from a dear, dear friend:

 

"Dear Angelo,

 

What is all the hubbub about destroying hard drives? It kind of gets me, well, excited like. De-gaussing sounds kinky. I'd love to try it next time you're in the neighborhood.

 

BTW your new avatar really brings out the man in you.

 

Affectionately yours,

 

Lois Lerner"

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I received this email today from a dear, dear friend:

 

"Dear Angelo,

 

What is all the hubbub about destroying hard drives? It kind of gets me, well, excited like. De-gaussing sounds kinky. I'd love to try it next time you're in the neighborhood.

 

BTW your new avatar really brings out the man in you.

 

Affectionately yours,

 

Lois Lerner"

 

 

^LOL, you totally suckered me in.

 

"P.S.: This email will self-destruct before the next Congressional hearing"

 

:D

 

So it looks like ranges like these are hard to come by in NJ. Just like open public ranges that let you setup your own run and gun scenarios. Looks like I'll be expanding my search to Eastern PA. Not looking to do this at a range where it isn't explicitly allowed. Also would like a range that allows the use of .223/5.56 rounds for this.

How much you willing to pay in range fees?

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