Clearing the unallocated disk space

[Michael D. Setzer II]

On 17 Nov 2014 at 14:00, Ed Greshko wrote:

From:           	Ed Greshko <ed.greshko at greshko.com>
Date sent:      	Mon, 17 Nov 2014 14:00:26 +0800
To:             	Community support for Fedora users 
<users at lists.fedoraproject.org>
Subject:        	Re: Clearing the unallocated disk space
Send reply to:  	Community support for Fedora users 
<users at lists.fedoraproject.org>
	
> On 11/17/14 12:58, Tim wrote:
> > There have been cases of people getting refurbished drives which did
> > have the previous owners data on them.
> 
> Do you have first hand knowledge of this or is this something you've just heard about?
> 
> The reason I ask this is I have a friend that worked at WD in the HD manufacturing and refurbishment area a few years back.  I had asked him about this very same thing.  He indicated that WD had very strict quality control and he couldn't think of a way it would pass through their processes with previous data still intact.
> 
> Or, maybe you're talking about cases where the drives aren't actually going back to the manufacturer?
> 

Back in 2006 at Defcon there was a presentation on recovering data from 
disks, and it went from simple tasks of using software to actually physically 
opening the disks. The middle section covered repairing disks by replacing 
the controller board. I've actually been able to get data off disks that have 
gone bad by getting a disk on Ebay with the same board, and swapping it 
out. Don't know if manufactures would do with a disk with a bad controller 
board, or if they were to old to be actually resold after repairing them. 
Someone may be able to buy these disks, and take working parts from a 
couple to get some working. 

Long ago, when I did an intership at a TV station, we had a big degausser to 
erase the 3/4 inch tape cartridges. Would be nice to have that done with 
disks that they can not repair to make sure.

> -- 
> If you can't laugh at yourself, others will gladly oblige.
> 
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+----------------------------------------------------------+
  Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor      
  Guam Community College  Computer Center                  
  mailto:mikes at kuentos.guam.net                            
  mailto:msetzerii at gmail.com
  http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
  Guam - Where America's Day Begins                        
  G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer 
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
+----------------------------------------------------------+

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