[kwlug-disc] OT - degauss/wipe a dead hard drive/LTO tapes

[Oksana Goertzen]

Re:  drive encryption

How do you back up your data if the drive is encrypted?  Do you back up the
whole volume?  .. and how do you do that - login as a different account and
backup the directory/volume?  I guess I'm a little concerned about
corruption and
then the whole volume is gone.  I do use encryption for files and some
emails but
my keys are on the hdd  [.. and yes, there is a difficult & long password
defined
for the key].

Thanks, Oksana



On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Chris Irwin <chris at chrisirwin.ca> wrote:

> On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 10:58, Oksana Goertzen <ogoertzen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello Everyone,
> >
> > I have a hard drive that can be sent back to the manufacturer because
> it's
> > still
> > under warranty.  The drive is no longer boot-able.  Will degaussing the
> > drive
> > wipe it sufficiently?  Does anyone have access to such a device or a
> strong
> > electric magnet?  I can't run DBAN or destroy the drive because it needs
> to
> > go back to the manufacturer in good enough condition that they can
> determine
> > it failed.
>
> Is the drive even detected, or is it just a brick? If it at least
> shows up (but is inaccessible) it might be worth a shot at poking the
> secure-erase functionality built-in to most hard drives nowdays.
>
> Unfortunately I'm not sure how to activate it (smartctl doesn't seem
> to poke that, at least nothing in the manpage indicates so). I encrypt
> my hard drive for just this reason (I sent a failed drive back last
> year without a worry).
>
> This doesn't help if the drive is really just a big brick. I'd be
> worried about taking any sort of invasive procedures. Will they look
> at the drive and say "It failed 'cause you stuck a big electromagnet
> next to it", even if that was after the fact?
>
> > And on a side note, we have a number (a lot, actually) of LTO tapes at
> work
> > that should either be destroyed or degaussed.  Does anyone know anything
> > about degaussing tapes?  Can they be recycled at all?
>
> --
> Chris Irwin
> <chris at chrisirwin.ca>
>
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