Re: The hammer is best
Joed Oakes <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | comp.os.linux.misc |
|---|---|
| Organization | Home for Wayward Motorcycles |
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
On 8/23/26 08:16, The Natural Philosopher wrote: > On 23/08/2026 12:55, Carlos E.R. wrote: >> On 2026-08-23 11:14, Richard Kettlewell wrote: >>> [email protected] (Kenny McCormack) writes: >>>> Carlos E.R. <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> ... >>>>>> are hidden buffers plus the wear-leveling scheme >>>>>> gets in the way. You wipe 'em the Hillary Clinton >>>>>> way - HAMMER :-) >>>>> >>>>> Instead, use encryption, on the device or the partitions. >>>> >>>> Hammer is better, because encryption can be worked around by holding a >>>> gun to the head of the person who knows the encryption key. >>> >>> My backup drives are encrypted. In principle they could be stolen from >>> here, from an offsite location or in transit and if that happens I won’t >>> have the opportunity to destroy it. >> >> Exactly. >> >> And in the typical business case, hammering of disks is not often done. > > It is UNIVERSALLY done in the UK. > Insurance will be voided, contracts lost and people will get fired if > it is not. > > The big sources of usable hardware are BIG corporates - banks, insurance > companies, travel agencies... they dump a thousand machines a year to > recycling companies who sign in blood that the disk will be CRUSHED. > >> Hard disks are simply repurposed, recycled, sold... usually zeroing >> them first. Encryption protects the case when zeroing is forgotten, or >> the disk breaks before that. Encryption protects against such accidents. >> > No, they are not. Not by corporations. Some Mickey Mouse companies with > nothing worth stealing might... 20 years ago where I worked we used the hammer and drill approach, but that was NEVER environmentally responsible. NOTE that Western Digital runs a drive recycling program for EOL hard drives. They may not pay you money, but they do offer credits on new hard drives. Considering that China is constricting the availability of rare earth magnets now I think it behooves us to recycle these drives whenever possible. WD claims to wipe the drives on arrival, but I still run dd -if /dev/urandom of=/dev/xxx multiple times on anything I send them... Aside from that, I keep all my hard drives encrypted at rest. -- "Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Terry Pratchett, Discworld