Re: [tlug] Dealing with a possibly busted external HD

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2017-03-17 16:59 +0900 (Fri), Claus Aranha wrote:

> * The disk dying after 4 years of inactivity seems to kinda defeat the
> purpose of a backup disk :-/

The backups are fine. The problem is, you, as with most people, don't
care about backups; you want disaster recovery. :-)

At least you've found an easier way than some of learning the lesson
that you should be testing your ability to restore on a regular basis.

On 2017-03-17 08:39 -0400 (Fri), jep200404@example.com wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Mar 2017 16:59:21 +0900, Claus Aranha <caranha@example.com> wrote:
> 
> > But I'd like to clean it up before throwing it
> > away to make sure someone more hardware savvy than me cannot recover
> > anything. Any suggestions?
> 
> Smash the platters with a hammer or big screwdriver hit with a hammer.

That's ok if your attackers are not very motivated (read: "downright
lazy"), but doing that in a business that's dealing with things like
個人情報 puts you at risk of a lawsuit. NIST SP 800.88 is your friend
here. Table 5-1 gives you your options.

Myself, I generally go for keeping the drive encrypted and just
removing all keys from it before disposal.

[1]: http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-88r1.pdf

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson         <cjs@example.com>         +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch