gabby
Trail Wise!
Posts: 4,539 
|
Post by gabby on Sept 21, 2016 11:01:45 GMT -8
Until recently, I had never really thought about what happens to my old electronics. I took them to a community e-waste recycling drive, or dropped my old phone in a box somewhere, and I assumed my stuff was recycled.
An alarming portion of the time this is not actually the case, according to the results of a project that used GPS trackers to follow e-waste over the course of two years. Forty percent of all US electronics recyclers testers included in the study proved to be complete shams, with our e-waste getting shipped wholesale to landfills in Hong Kong, China, and developing nations in Africa and Asia.
The most important thing to know about the e-waste recycling industry is that it is not free to recycle an old computer or an old CRT television. The value of the raw materials in the vast majority of old electronics is worth less than it costs to actually recycle them. While consumers rarely have to pay e-waste recycling companies to take their old electronics (costs are offset by local tax money or manufacturers fronting the bill as part of a legally mandated obligated recycling quota), companies, governments, and organizations do. "A Shocking Amount of E-Waste Recycling Is a Complete Sham"
|
|
|
|
Post by Lamebeaver on Sept 21, 2016 12:26:40 GMT -8
|
|
|
|
Post by autumnmist on Sept 21, 2016 14:55:57 GMT -8
Sometime ago I watched a documentary on e-waste in the emerging market countries. Not only is it creating hazards for the people there, reports were that people were wandering through the piles of e-waste and plucking hard drives from computers, garnering for nefarious purposes what information might be available. I thought everyone destroyed their hard drives before scrapping their computers?
|
|
tigger
Trail Wise!
Posts: 2,547
|
Post by tigger on Sept 21, 2016 15:14:54 GMT -8
I thought everyone destroyed their hard drives before scrapping their computers? I'd say roughly 50% of my customers do...and the reality is that you have to you a scrambling program designed to write over the data a minimum of five times to significantly destroy it. I have been able to recover nearly all of the data from a deleted partition that had been wiped and windows reinstalled on it. |
|
|
|
Post by autumnmist on Sept 21, 2016 18:26:53 GMT -8
you have to you a scrambling program designed to write over the data a minimum of five times to significantly destroy it. Could a strong magnet also be run over the disc? I was also thinking of a magnet about 3" in diameter that I use for picking up metal, or would that be too light? Would putting it in bleach destroy it? What about smashing it? It's almost curious that destruction is so difficult, yet some malware can wipe out drives sufficient to require re-installation, or at least that's my understanding. If drive scavengers are anywhere near as capable as you are, anyone who doesn't find a way to destroy his/her data is in trouble. |
|
Ed
Trail Wise!
Philmont Advisor and FOM (Fat Old Man)
Posts: 125
|
Post by Ed on Sept 22, 2016 4:25:06 GMT -8
An easy way to destroy/erase/eliminate data on a hard drive is disassembly. Or, erasure via sledge hammer.... 
Maybe even being used as a target at a local range...
A hole through the disk platters with the associated bending of said platters works every time.
Most commercial degaussers (sp?), hard drive erasers, are really just really big AC electromagnets. They even get the aluminium cases hot because of induced currents from the alternating fields. |
|
tigger
Trail Wise!
Posts: 2,547
|
Post by tigger on Sept 22, 2016 6:19:41 GMT -8
Could a strong magnet also be run over the disc? I was also thinking of a magnet about 3" in diameter that I use for picking up metal, or would that be too light? Would putting it in bleach destroy it? What about smashing it? I have been able to recover a smashed hard drive. Mind you, the platter inside was still fine. I simply removed it (in a clean room environment) and put it in another identical model. Putting it in bleach could damage the case itself but again, the platter could simply be cleaned with IPA and put inside another drive case. Commercial magnets designed to "wipe" drives do indeed work, assuming they are used properly (going over the entire surface of the platter(s). SSD drives are a different ball of wax. Using the Trim feature to reset the data blocks is how you would securely wipe the drive since they write data differently than a standard HD. |
|
amaruq
Trail Wise!
Call me Little Spoon
Posts: 1,264
|
Post by amaruq on Sept 22, 2016 7:25:30 GMT -8
the platter could simply be cleaned with IPA Is there anything a good IPA can't do? |
|
|
|
Post by autumnmist on Sept 23, 2016 6:53:56 GMT -8
Seems like the discs are almost indestructible and could "live" forever, like plastics that litter waterways.
I have to confess most of the suggestions on this thread require knowledge well beyond mine. I have some studying to do to decide how to destroy my old discs. Maybe I'll punch holes in them, paint flowers on them, and make windchimes out of them, putting them up in the corn patch next year to hopefully keep the crows from getting the seeds before they even sprout.
|
|
tigger
Trail Wise!
Posts: 2,547
|
Post by tigger on Sept 23, 2016 6:59:39 GMT -8
I have to confess most of the suggestions on this thread require knowledge well beyond mine. I have some studying to do to decide how to destroy my old discs. Maybe I'll punch holes in them, paint flowers on them, and make windchimes out of them, putting them up in the corn patch next year to hopefully keep the crows from getting the seeds before they even sprout. There are free programs (Spybot Search and Destroy) that have tools within them to wipe drives to governmental standards (IE - not able to recover "accidentally" deleted e-mails) |
|
|
|
Post by autumnmist on Sept 23, 2016 7:52:08 GMT -8
tigger , thanks so much for that information. It would simplify my educational process!
|
|
