Man Buys 'Destroyed' Hard Drive

[quote0a03fb2d32="Slashdot"]From Yahoo News comes this tidbit about a couple who got a very shocking phone call. Henry and Roma Gerbus received a phone call from a man named Ed claiming he had purchased their old hard drive at a flea market[=http//news.yahoo.com/s/wlwt/20060601/lo_wlwt/9303216]their old hard drive at a flea market. They had previously taken their computer to Best Buy to have the hard drive replaced and were told that the store would destroy it. Now it has turned up at a flea market, still containing their personal information, such as bank account numbers and Social Security numbers. The Gerbus' are a little perplexed and are very worried about identity theft.[/quote0a03fb2d32]


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that [b0a03fb2d32]sucks[/b0a03fb2d32].

I'd sue bestbuy

That sucks, hope the guy gets his 25$ back.

Thats Best buy's fault, sue them!

You gotta wipe your own drives, TRUST NO ONE!

isn't the hard drive broken though?

I think he brought it to bestbuy to get it upgraded.........

Never trust those fools. First thing they do is look for nekkids and CC info...

sue em! sue em! i definately would...

[quoteae10bdb19e="Wolfeman"]Never trust those fools. First thing they do is look for nekkids and CC info...[/quoteae10bdb19e]

So what you're saying, is that you fill your HDs with gay porn? ?

another reason why best buy is actually worst buy

I work at best buy and our customers always get their dead drives back for this reason among others. Also, wiping a drive does not get rid of your data. It is still there but the table of contents is erased only. This data can often be recovered through advanced data recovery tools. The surest way to make sure people cant get your data is to drill a hole into the drive.

[quotec3a9e8e85d="JOSHBOX"]I work at best buy and our customers always get their dead drives back for this reason among others. Also, wiping a drive does not get rid of your data. It is still there but the table of contents is erased only. This data can often be recovered through advanced data recovery tools. The surest way to make sure people cant get your data is to drill a hole into the drive.[/quotec3a9e8e85d]Thats why you fdisk the drive.

cant you magnet wipe a dead drive?

Use the DOD standard write random 1 and 0s thru the whole drive, wipe it repeat 7 times...

[quote5fe13143ba="gruffer"][quote5fe13143ba="JOSHBOX"]I work at best buy and our customers always get their dead drives back for this reason among others. Also, wiping a drive does not get rid of your data. It is still there but the table of contents is erased only. This data can often be recovered through advanced data recovery tools. The surest way to make sure people cant get your data is to drill a hole into the drive.[/quote5fe13143ba]Thats why you fdisk the drive.[/quote5fe13143ba]

fdisk deletes the partition, not the data. There are high level formats you can do with certain programs that go and write 0's on every bit on the hard drive like wolfe described. But other than that, an fdisk is really just erasing the table of contents, like i said. If you gave me an fdisked hard drive I could easily recover your data from it with advanced recovery software.

Like Josh said, the only way to really be sure is to use a drill.

or melt the damn thing )

[quoted20456af95="jy3"]or melt the damn thing )[/quoted20456af95]

yeah seriously or bury it in the yard, run it over with the tractor, anything. Seems easy enough to avoid

[quote6b430db73b="ragefu"][quote6b430db73b="jy3"]or melt the damn thing )[/quote6b430db73b]

yeah seriously or bury it in the yard, run it over with the tractor, anything. Seems easy enough to avoid[/quote6b430db73b]

The platters might survive that. The drill will shatter them.

so then...
drill it
burn it
bury it in the snow overnight (in buffalo that is cold) or soak in water