Disposing of old devices

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Meat Target said:
It ran like Molasses on a cold day in Finland.
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As Windows 10 gets new builds it also gets more bloated and uses more resources. As a lighweight Linux distro Lubuntu works great on older hardware, a SSD is a must upgrade and another thing ovelooked is the RAM configuration. It's better to have 2 x 2GB SDRAM modules than 1 x 4GB module and one empty slot. Two channels of RAM will have more throughput than a single channel and is recommended if the GPU is integrated.
 
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Meat Target said:
Will that suffice for INFOSEC? I have some other old devices I don't want anymore.
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For all legal purposes:
NSA says you should also de-magnetise the drives. But if you know how HDD recovery is done, they need to be able to get the platters read by the read-write head. If the platters are so fucked up that they wont sit in a drive right, the head's not going to be able to operate on the platters correctly, and you should be fine. Arguably your adversary could set something up were they could try to take small section of the broken platter and read those out side of drive with the right equipment. The right equipment is a Magnetic field microscope. http://www.ensl.osu.edu/AFM.aspx Which you will need to translate the readings from into a hard-dive image. I'm guessing magnetic field microscopes prohibitively expensive given that on their website they don't offer a price and instead say: "contact us". https://www.bruker.com/products/sur...orce-microscopes/dimension-icon/overview.html

I usually just beat the shit out of my drives. From my experience, recovery outlets seem to focus more on software recovery and avoid doing hardware recovery. When they do hardware recovery there usually just trying to rebuild the drive. Rebuilding the drive sucks as a strategy for a number of resonances, mainly firmware differences that can cause controller boards and platters to be incomparable. To get compatible pair you have to hunt down a hard-drive made with the same firmware as the patient drive which is not easily done.

Also if you want to make this all harder for your adversary, you should throw out the parts of the broken hard-drive separately, maybe in public trash and don't show off what you're doing. There is always some nosy Karen ready to start interrogating you for what's in your garbage.
 
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Rozzy said:
As Windows 10 gets new builds it also gets more bloated and uses more resources. As a lighweight Linux distro Lubuntu works great on older hardware, a SSD is a must upgrade and another thing ovelooked is the RAM configuration. It's better to have 2 x 2GB SDRAM modules than 1 x 4GB module and one empty slot. Two channels of RAM will have more throughput than a single channel and is recommended if the GPU is integrated.
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while it's definitely a 'workaround', Windows10Debloater script works actual miracles. Turns out that those 100 apps sitting there at 0% cpu in task manager actually have a horrific effect on your speed on lower end devices.

But yes, SSD upgrade is a must regardless.
 
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So how does OPL dispose of old tech? Does it just get subsumed into the horde or would he throw it out?
 
stares at error messages said:
I usually just beat the shit out of my drives. From my experience, recovery outlets seem to focus more on software recovery and avoid doing hardware recovery. When they do hardware recovery there usually just trying to rebuild the drive. Rebuilding the drive sucks as a strategy for a number of resonances, mainly firmware differences that can cause controller boards and platters to be incomparable. To get compatible pair you have to hunt down a hard-drive made with the same firmware as the patient drive which is not easily done.
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When data is overwritten it's gone these days. One time some people asked me to recover data they had deleted, easy peasy, but only the filesystem had any records of those files existing, nothing was recoverable because it had been overwritten. It actually was important and I got the OK do send it off to the really big boys and they couldn't do shit. For $25k they offered to TRY everything so they could write and sign an expert testimonial explaining why the data was unrecoverable. For the future insurance claim or lawsuit, whichever came first. Getting the data back was a no-go on a perfectly healthy disk. But mah Gutmann!

Thought this would be this kind of thread:
dumpfile.jpg
 
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User names must be unique said:
You really think some bum going through your trash is going to find your old HDD successfully perform a plater swap, do a successful data restore then break the passwords required to find that info?

Unless you're the head of a large successful business/government department or on the Forbes rich list you can probably relax. The shock from dropping it in the trash is enough.
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Okay Karen
Smaug's Smokey Hole said:
When data is overwritten it's gone these days. One time some people asked me to recover data they had deleted, easy peasy, but only the filesystem had any records of those files existing, nothing was recoverable because it had been overwritten. It actually was important and I got the OK do send it off to the really big boys and they couldn't do shit. For $25k they offered to TRY everything so they could write and sign an expert testimonial explaining why the data was unrecoverable. For the future insurance claim or lawsuit, whichever came first. Getting the data back was a no-go on a perfectly healthy disk. But mah Gutmann!
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The drive probably had trim. Was it a Shingled Magnetic Recording drive or SSD?
 
Meat Target said:
I got a new laptop for Christmas. Ripped and smashed up my old one, then threw it in the trash, then took a hammer to the hard drive till it rattled like there was sand inside, then doused it in lighter fluid and torched it, throwing it away in a separate bag.

Will that suffice for INFOSEC? I have some other old devices I don't want anymore.
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Just use a Windows 10 boot disc to wipe your child modelling pics in future.
www.techrepublic.com

How to perform a secure disk wipe with Windows 10's Format command

No need to track down a third-party hard drive wipe utility. Windows can handle the task natively.
www.techrepublic.com www.techrepublic.com
 
tbf "smash with a hammer" was a normal thing at a relatively mundane job I had
some computers would have bank account info for other businesses for autopay purposes so they did it as a cya thing
but when they did that they'd leave the rest of the computer intact for anybody who wanted it to take home, so I have a mess of XP and 7 serials and the remains of a few business computers that I frankenstined
 
Meat Target said:
It ran like Molasses on a cold day in Finland.
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A new SSD and a clean install of a new OS may have done wonders. You could have still gone nuts with the old HDD; plenty of fun destruction potential there. Taking a Dremel to the innards of an old HDD can be surprisingly therapeutic...

Other than being a bit slow, how fucked was the laptop prior to it being destroyed? Were there keys missing, cracks in the case etc?
 
Rusty Crab said:
Also, you can just slow-format hardrives a couple of times over if you want to destroy everything. If they're windows based, just do whole disk encryption (not used space, all space) and then slow format over that. That'll scramble everything.
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If it is an external drive, I just slow-format and disconnect the usb cable in the middle of formatting. Windows won't even recognize the drive after that.
 
I had a motherboard die on an old CPU of mine. The fans were all basic bitch intel shit so i left them, but I removed the DVD-RW drives and cables since they were still good, took the power supply since that was also good, and took the ram and hard drive.

Graphics card was a GTX 1060 and considering how prices are now, I figure it's better to hold on to old shit just incase something blows on my other computers.

The set up was a modified pre-built so the case had all these extra walled crap inside of it ensuring that you couldn't easily customize the set up or do proper internal cable control. Considering you can get a way nicer case with LED lights for under 80 bucks now, the case went out in the trash along with the motherboard.
 
Rusty Crab said:
why would you not just keep old laptops? They're still expensive, they take up almost no space and even 15 year old ones can still be useful today if you refurbish them at minimal cost. It's actually depressing how little CPUs have advanced in the past 20 years.

Also, you can just slow-format hardrives a couple of times over if you want to destroy everything. If they're windows based, just do whole disk encryption (not used space, all space) and then slow format over that. That'll scramble everything.
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It's not that they haven't advanced. Look at some gaming benchmarks on youtube of extreme edition core 2 quads vs modern $50 pentiums, the mentium slaughters the core 2.

And in mobile? A core m3 in a tablet obliterates high end decade old stuff like the t9900 or the core i7 800m series.

It really boils down to good enough. How much power do you really need to view a forum, or watch a video? With modern video decoding in modern GPUs the need for more processing power has stalled.

This is great for us though. Modern laptops can hit 10-12 hours of usage on a 40wh battery, while laptops from yesteryear get 3-4 hrs from a 99wh battery. And those old machines still work, so long as the batteries don't fail completely.
AmpleApricots said:
I sell everything I really don't need anymore, even if it's just for a few bucks and even if I don't need the money. Helps with making the trash heap grow slower. Drives I dismantle, salvage the interesting parts (screws, magnets, controller boards for passive components etc.) and the rest I throw away.
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Honestly with the way the tech market is right now selling is a great idea. I'm looking to slim my collection down and so far everything has sold for more then I paid for it.
 
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We've actually seen on the news that the most secure way to dispose of a device is just to throw it in the trash.
www.businessinsider.com

A man who says he threw away a hard drive loaded with 7,500 bitcoins in 2013 is offering his city $70 million to dig it up from the dump

James Howells, from Wales, threw away the hard drive containing the cryptocurrency in 2013. The trove, buried at a huge dump, is worth $275 million.
www.businessinsider.com www.businessinsider.com
Town bureaucrats simply WILL NOT let anyone go in and dig through the landfill, for any amount of money.
Unless you're worried about the highest levels of government (or archaeologists from 10000 years in the future), just toss it out with your old pizza boxes.
 
DNA_JACKED said:
It's not that they haven't advanced. Look at some gaming benchmarks on youtube of extreme edition core 2 quads vs modern $50 pentiums, the mentium slaughters the core 2.

And in mobile? A core m3 in a tablet obliterates high end decade old stuff like the t9900 or the core i7 800m series.
Click to expand...
Yeah, CPUs have increased massively in performance. What changed around that time was that Windows became solid and software became better while internet connectivity moved from modems to broadband. Things weren't total shit anymore.
 
there is only one good way...


The fun from smashing shit up is worth much more than selling 50€ worth of laptop on Ebay...
 
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