What To Do With Old USB Keys, Low-Capacity Hard Drives? 546
MessedRocker writes "I have at least a few USB flash drives around that I haven't needed since I got my 16GB flash drive, a 40GB external hard drive which I haven't needed since I upgraded to 500GB, and a couple of SATA hard drives I have pulled out of laptops which are either as large or smaller than the one I have in my laptop now. Furthermore, I don't really know anyone who needs any hard drives or flash drives. What should I do with my small, obsolete storage devices?"
Chuck'em out (Score:2)
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't just chuck them. Look for a high-school that has a proper computer engineering program, and drop them off there. Whether you give them to the teachers or the students directly, they'll love you for it.
I remember building and disassembling many a computer in my class before I was able to install windows 95 (and subsequently, starcraft) on them.
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, high schools have computer engineering programs?! My high school seemed to be interested in finding the least qualified teacher possible for our computer-related classes, even though I found a professor from a prestigious university who was willing to teach the computer science classes. So not fair. :(
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"is mostly obsolete in a few years,"
False.
The information I learned about computers in 1980 is still valid. Is there MORE stuff? sure.
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:5, Informative)
You're not a programmer, are you? I ask because no programmer would ever say that.
The C programming language came out in 72 [wikipedia.org], and C++ came a few years later [wikipedia.org]. Both are in the top three most popular programming languages [tiobe.com] "based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors" and they make up 25% out of the top 20 languages in the list. Although the number one language, Java, makes up 19%, it "derives much of its syntax from C and C++" and Java came out in 1995 [wikipedia.org].
Other sources say C is still responsible for nearly 50% of new open source projects, followed by Java with 28%. [theregister.co.uk]
So even if you took a programming class 30 years ago it would still very much apply today.
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:4, Interesting)
During my senior year (1997), my high school created an Intro to C Programming class. Since I had pretty much mastered TI-BASIC during various boring math and english classes, and had been lazily self-teaching myself C at home for a year or two, it seemed like a good idea.
They gave the calculus teacher a dozen 8086s (to be honest, you don't really need anything more than DOS at 8MHz to compile and run Hello World) and had him take night classes at the local Vo-Tech. He set up the curriculum so that he was teaching us about a week behind what he was learning in his own class.
I spent most of the semester helping my classmates learn what he was trying to teach, and yes, sometimes correcting his mistakes directly. I was so bored by the time the final project rolled around, I had to do SOMETHING to make it challenging. So, I wrote my final program for my TI-85, by setting up a cross compiler under a PC emulator on my Amiga, and loading the executable using ZShell. Easily the most fun I've had for a school programming project.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:4, Informative)
MP3 distribution and long-term backup (Score:5, Insightful)
For the flash drives, fill them with your favorite MP3 songs, hundreds of them. Then trade them with other people who are doing the same. Trade a 512Mb drive for one the same size with someone in your office or class. If you are a student, try setting up an underground library where other students contribute flash drives filled with various genres of music, like alt-country or 19th-century German classical. Trade or 'check out' these flash drives from this underground library instead of doing file downloading. This way you can get hundreds of songs at one time without exposing yourself to the RIAA extortionists.
For SATA and IDE drives, get a USB-to-IDE/SATA interface for about $20. These drives can now be used as unplugged backup of things like movies, music libraries, and huge data banks. This is for things that you access several times a year and don't need to always be on your main PC/laptop hard drive.
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:5, Informative)
Donating, schmonating. We're at the start of Depression #2, and every penny counts. I earn around $300 each month just selling old stuff like videos, books, and gadgets. Amazon is good for earning a higher price, but it does require patience. Ebay is better if you want to get rid of stuff right now:
- List it for 99 cents and $5 ship/handling
- Or 1 cent and $6 ship/handling
Please note I said S&H not postage. Shipping is for the ~$3 postage, but the "handling" covers your personal labor (you don't work for free) and the outrageous fees ebay charges (they don't work for free either). Someone will buy your item because there's always someone looking for old items, and you'll make around a dollar profit for each flash or hard drive sold. Possibly more if the demand is high.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
- List it for 99 cents and $5 ship/handling
- Or 1 cent and $6 ship/handling
Personally I'd much rather buy a $6.01 item with free shipping than a 0.01 item with $6 shipping. It just feels more upfront and honest.
I despise "1 cent item plus $20 shipping and handling listings". If you want 20 bucks just fucking come out and say so. Do you think I'm going to be so stupid as to latch onto the 1 cent item because its such an awesome deal, and my brain will cease functioning before I figure out what the actual fin
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ebay double and triple dips when it comes to listing fees. Depending on the listing you are charged for: base listing cost + some percentage of starting bid/reserve price; additionally you are charged for a percentage of the ending price.
Ebay does not charge more for listings based on the shipping fees, which is what encourages sellers to gouge so much.
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. And it's prohibited by their rules, so the best way to get rid of it is to report it.
No. The best way to get rid of it is to change the rules.
So... looking at the fees;
Right now its 8.75% on the first 25, and 3.5% on 25.01 to 1k and 1.5% on 1k+
Fee on an auction that was $20+$5 is $1.75
Fee on an auction that was $1+$24 is $0.09
Fee on an auction that was $3+$3 is $0.26
Fee on an auction that was $0.01+$6 is $0.00
No wonder people gamed the system.
Solve the problem trivially:
Charge 5.75% on the first 25$ including shipping. (For categories like books, games, dvds, toys, collectibles, etc, etc)
Under this regime:
Fee on an item that is $20+$5 is 1.43.
Fee on an item that is $1+$24 is 1.43.
Fee on an item that is $3+$3 is 0.35
Fee on an item that is $0.01+$4.99 is 0.35
For people who were playing by the rules it amounts it changes things a bit, price goes up 9 cents on a cheap item; but goes down around 32 cents for items closer to 25. Overall, its a pretty fair change.
But for people who were gaming the system, well, now they can't.
And now there is actually an incentive to combine shipping on multiple orders to a single buyer, as their ebay fees would go down accordingly, and their profit actually goes up slightly. Under the current regime where people are taking their profit in shipping, they actually either lose money when combining shipping or piss off buyers by refusing to do so.
And by removing all the gaming and improving the customer experience, ebay will easily come out ahead.
The solution is to change the rules.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Screw Ebay, put them on Craigslist.
Re:Chuck'em out (Score:5, Informative)
"Thumb Drive Drive - Do you have old thumb drives (otherwise known as USB Memory Sticks) at your office or home that you don't use anymore? We're collecting these drives to share with the organizations we work with. They can be used in hundreds of useful ways by: * Teachers * Students * Relief Camp Workers Please keep sending them in to Inveneo here and we'll make sure they get out to people and organizations who can use them well: Inveneo 972 Mission Street 5th Floor San Francisco, CA 94103"
Donate to a school or charity (Score:4, Insightful)
Scrub the data then donate it to charity or a school. If they can't use it they can give it away to a client or resell it.
I'm sure some /.ers have some 5 or 10MB drives in their closets.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully you are at least *recycling* them, so the metals and whatever else can be reused and not pollute.
One word... (Score:5, Informative)
FreeGeek [freegeek.org].
Re:One word... (Score:5, Funny)
That's two words (Score:3, Funny)
s/([a-z])([A-Z])/${1}_$2/g
Real geeks don't strip spaces - they use underscores :P
(Unless you're a JavaScript programmer in which case I'm terribly sorry...)
Re: Or... (Score:3, Informative)
charity donation? Freecycle? (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Do what I did to my old printer that kept telling me to "PC load letter".
Hitting a thumb drive with a hammer is not nearly as satisfying as elbow dropping a printer. It's one and done.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
Do what I did to my old printer that kept telling me to "PC load letter".
Load 'letter' sized paper into the paper cassette tray and continue?
Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, but that's just not how we do things around here. If the printer is doing anything other than printing your document, the correct solution is to wander aimlessly away and hope someone else will eventually fix it. As an added bonus, you get to tell everyone the printer is broken, and that's why you weren't able to get any work done today.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously your users haven't discovered the "send the job to every printer on site" trick yet. Works like a charm and I get to recycle stacks and stacks of orphaned documents.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
Just an FYI, the American 8.5*11 paper standard does the same thing. A letter sized page is called ANSI A. Two side by side form a sheet that is 11*17 is ANSI B, which you may be familiar with as the wide computer paper. It is also called "ledger" or "tabloid". Two ANSI B sheets, side by side form an ANSI C sheet, two Cs form a D and two Ds form an ANSI E. ANSI Es are used for wall sized maps, and correspond to the metric A0. Unfortunately, the aspect ratio doesn't match that from a step up/down, however it does match the aspect ratio for two steps up or down. Thus it is easy to scale a four to a page layout.
I wish we would ditch the American standard here in the Great White North, but our biggest trading partner is the US, and since they're still in the horse and buggy era when it comes to measuring systems and since they outnumber us ten to one, we need to play along.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Funny)
Are you whispering in italics because you're a polite Canadian? Cheney's gone, man, you don't have to worry about criticizing America anymore!
Just recycle them (Score:4, Informative)
With the higher energy consumptions of older drives it's just more economical to recycle.
Older flash drives will be unreliable soon.
So I suggest the obvious: just recycle or find someone locally, who wants the stuff (poor student etc...) But do not send to Africa because I feel it's just shifting the problem and the cost of shipping is not worth it for whoever does it.
Re:Just recycle them (Score:5, Insightful)
The Africans making a living taking care of our electronics "waste" would probably disagree with you.
Just because we don't consider it worth our health to use nasty chemicals to reclaim metals from scrap boards, doesn't mean no one should want to do it.
where do those chemicals go, rocket genius? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because we don't consider it worth our health to use nasty chemicals to reclaim metals from scrap boards, doesn't mean no one should want to do it.
Actually, it does, given that here in the 1st world, we have the technology and knowledge to reclaim the metals without putting hundreds of thousands of people in immediate danger, and with probably far greater efficiency in terms of recovery amounts and emissions per quantity recovered. That's the first piece of the pie.
The second piece of the pie: in
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The nasty chemicals originally came from the ground.
You mean like oil, coal, and uranium? Yeah, things from the ground can't cause environmental damage.
Store small, high-value secrets (Score:2)
Type up your passwords and encryption keys and put the device in a safe somewhere.
It seems like a 1 kilobyte file is more likely to last on a hard drive if you store 50 million copies of it. (And if you store 500,000 copies of the file on a CD, you're less likely to be screwed by a scratch.) Is there an easy way to automate this duplication? Some weird "very small, very-high-repetition on same volume" file system, or just a perl script?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Since Perl is pretty loosely typed, Once it overflows its int type, it'll become a float type, then it'll just keep growing till it hits infinity.
Or until, in float, you run out of precision in the mantissa so that you can't fit 1 and the number in the same range. The proverbial 3000000000000000 + 1 = 3000000000000000.
For IEEE754 32 bit float, that's about 24 bits worth of float, so about 16,777,216 is the biggest for single precision float.
#include <stdio.h> int main(void) { int i; float j = 16777210; for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) { printf("%f\n", j); j = j + 1; } return 0; }
16777210.000000
16777211
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
True, I forgot about that.
According to this, Perl's floats are stored in 64, 96, or sometimes 128 bits, depending on how it was compiled. My system reports using 64 bits, so it will run out of precision before hitting 2^53, it seems.
Also, even if Perl went all the way to infinity with "x++", the rate of new files being made would slow down considerably once you started hitting scientific notation.
So really, if you wanted to fill the disk in this way, you want to make sure you append to the file instead of o
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm... the link didn't work.
http://www.mail-archive.com/dbi-users%40perl.org/msg29840.html [mail-archive.com]
Must be because of the "at" symbol in the original URL. I've replaced it with the hex value.
Become a porn secret santa (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Become a porn secret santa (Score:5, Funny)
Your plan is nice and all, but it lacks the life-destroying element that a truly diabolical plan should have.
What he should do is load them up with child porn and sneak them into the briefcases of all the people who have wronged him. He does keep a list of everyone who has ever wronged him labeled "people to utterly destroy", right? Doesn't everybody?
Anyway, after you've done that, place anonymous calls to the FBI from various pay phones saying you've seen these people loitering around elementary schools. Then, sit back and watch your problems disappear.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Quite right. Whoever gets around to lists. Why procrastinate? Utterly destroy people at the earliest opportunity.
Re:Become a porn secret santa (Score:5, Funny)
Load them up with porn and give them to random people anonymously. They will thank you for it!
Done and done! I made sure to include two girls and one cup, Mr. Hands, and the awesome Glass Ass a couple of dozen times, but I helpfully changed their names.
Well, it's almost Easter. And that's sort of an Easter Egg.
I wonder how they'll thank me?
Give them to CowboyNeal (Score:2, Funny)
This should about double the /. server storage space.
You'll need to throw in ISA SATA and USB cards though.
Seriously. (Score:4, Funny)
Mail them to me.
Starcraft on a stick. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.yellowchrome.org/1com/galaxytribune/sos.html [yellowchrome.org]
Whats better than whipping it out and playing some starcraft?
Re:Starcraft on a stick. (Score:5, Funny)
Whats better than whipping it out and playing some starcraft?
Whipping it out is always good, Starcraft's just a bonus.
portable linux (Score:5, Insightful)
What I normally do is (Score:5, Funny)
Good times (Score:5, Funny)
Explosives + Old Hardware = Good Times!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Explosives + Zealous Police = Hard Time!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Explosives + Old Hardware = Good Times!
Another good variation:
Firearms + Old Hardware = Good Times! [flickr.com]
I took the platter out of that and still have it sitting by my desk, really interesting how it deforms.
The answer is obvious (Score:5, Informative)
Go back in time to 1960 and sell them for several hundred million each.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Go back in time to 1960 and sell them for several hundred million each.
whoever modded parent "informative" needs a serious head check
Re:The answer is obvious (Score:4, Funny)
Backups (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot have too many backups. Old drives are perfect. Mount 'em, fill 'em with your configs, docs, etc. and put 'em away. Just make sure you always have the appropriate hardware and kernel support to read them if necessary.
Mine are ATA/IDE, and these interfaces will be deprecated very soon, I hear. So keep at least one IDE/ATA-to-USB housing around if you need their data.
Use USB2 to SATA-IDE cable (Score:3, Informative)
I bought this nice cable for 15$ that allows you to plug any SATA or ATA IDE harddrive to a USB port. Basically, any HD becomes a portable USB drive!
I use it for backups or large data transfers that would split on multiple DVDs. Best 15$ I ever spent.
Raid! (Score:5, Funny)
one word (Score:4, Interesting)
Only one thing to do... (Score:5, Funny)
Format them and donate to goodwill (Score:3, Interesting)
or salvation army or whoever in your city will take them (Austin TX has a very active Goodwill Computer Store).
Full format them first (not perfect, but there are so many drives with data on them that it is unlikely that someone will go to great lengths to read the edges of formatted tracks). If they don't format then break them down (cool magnets and platters that are better for target practice than CDs - they don't shred as easily).
Keep a few around, especially USB keys - better than burning something to CD is you need to hand data to someone.
Machine Configuration Control (Score:4, Interesting)
I build all of my rack machines from the same ISO image (well, images. One for Linux, one for OS X).
Within this image, there is a script that runs at boot time that checks for the presence of a USB Drive. If there is a USB Drive, the script will place machine specific configuration files from the USB Key onto the machine in question, so that the machine no longer holds a vanilla install, but instead a completely unique version.
This is great for replacing a down machine on a network -- if 'node1.example.com' goes down, just grab a waiting, fresh machine from the stock pile, insert the usb key labeled 'node1', and start the machine, and watch as the machine takes on the persona of 'node1' without user interaction. Kind of similar to a kickstart script, but with the versatility of being able to change an already configured machine.
Re:Machine Configuration Control (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, I can't share the scripts. And they wouldn't be of much use, either, because of the huge differences amongst systems. Slackware != Ubuntu != CentOS != OS X, etc
And I must say up front that it wasn't originally my idea. I only know the person who showed it to me (thanks, EW!).
I can explain an overview on how to set up:
1) Identify how your machine (OS/distro) identifies USB Devices. If they always come up as, say, '/media/USBDISK', you may be gold. Some systems will replace USBDISK with the formatted name of the drive. Simple solution: format all of your drives for this with the same name.
2) Find out how your drive handles startup scripts (is it Linux /etc/init.d/, or OS X launchd?), and how to always ensure the script gets run at boot (priority levels, chkconfigs, this is all different based upon system).
3) Have one script (say, checkUSB.sh) that forces an attempt at doing a mount, and then does a simple -f (bash) test to see if a file is present. ie, 'mount /dev/sdc1 /media/USBDISK; if [ -f /media/USBDISK/checkUSB.sh ]; then do_something; fi'. Depending on the system, you may not have to worry about doing the mount manually. Some OS's will have things automount before your script runs. That is a very happy, very sane environment to work with :]
4) All I have 'checkUSB.sh' do is copy a second shell script down from the drive. So, on every USBDISK, there is a shell script called 'install.sh'. The contents of this script can vary by machine (ie, my DNS flashkey's install.sh does different things than my firewall flashkey's install.sh). At this point, checkUSB.sh should call install.sh (if you are anal, you can do md5 checksums on the transfer to ensure it was copied correctly -- important for a safe/secure/important environment).
5) install.sh is where all the magic happens. The contents of this script varies, but it usually involves performing atomic moves (based upon success and checksums) to ensure everything happens or nothing happens. For example, almost all of my keys change the network configuration, so I include a new ifconfig file on the flash key. The process may work like this: move old ifconfig to ifconfig.old, md5sum the ifconfig on the flashkey, move ifconfig from flashkey to machine, perform md5sum. If md5sums match, move on to next file in script. If md5sums do not match, move old back to original (for all files) and note failure somewhere on the machine. You can also put in system beeps if you'd like. Once all files are transferred and md5sums confirmed, delete all original files.
6) At the end of the script, you should halt the machine from booting (it needs to boot with fresh files). I prefer to do a shutdown -h, as this will ensure to me that the data was read off the flash key. If you do a restart, you'll need to know that the machine went down and up (and finished copying), which is hard to do with a headless machine on a rack. If the machine goes fully down (and the power out), you'll know the script ran to completion. Otherwise, the machine can be put in a continual restart state.
good luck and let me know if your system works!
Data safety with extreme prejudice using a hammer (Score:3, Interesting)
Part and donate.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hard drives have strong (and small) magnets in them which are fun to play with, useful on your fridge, useful in woodshops (hanging tools), and probably useful just about anywhere.
Little flash drives, even 8MB ones, can be useful for students and library users. Donate those puppies, please.
Spread Stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
Put something on the USB key which you deem important to know (hear, see, read etc.), then 'lose' it somewhere. Someone might find it and check what's on it.
OK, there's the internet. Hm.. But I'd guess that people value a found piece of hardware higher than some arbitrary web page.
Re:Spread Stuff (Score:4, Funny)
Donate to school libraries (Score:4, Insightful)
Libraries, especially school libraries, often have a need for portable storage devices to help patrons move files around, for instance from one computer to another. Big drives get stolen, but old small ones don't so much. And if an old obsolete drive is taken, then it was free to the library.
Other public or semi-public computer labs probably could use them too. Think job centers, state-funded computer training groups, underfunded K12 schools, et c.
Know any kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
I did this with a floppy drive one time - it had died, nothing I could do was going to bring this thing back so...why not? Why not just open the thing up and show what's inside, pointing out the magents and the drive heads etc.. I'm not going to say it instilled a lifelong wish to become computer scientists or electrical engineers in them, but it held some interest for a few minutes, gave a bit more understanding and broke down one more piece of black-box mystique.
Cheers,
Ian
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree. I recently took an old Pentium 233MHz system and opened the case in front of my daughters (ages 6 and 8). I gave them screwdrivers and told them to take it apart. My older girl carried around the floppy drive (with cable) for about three months afterward, showing it to anyone who would listen. My younger girl helped install a NIC, too.
is there a Free Geek nearby? (Score:5, Informative)
Free Geek organizations (I can't speak for others) have a comittment to destroying data on donated drives before they go out again. If you don't want to (or are not allowed to) trust that, then you can download a copy of DBAN [dban.org] and nuke your drives for a few hours (or days) before you donate them.
For most civilian uses, 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX' is sufficient (with today's drive density) to make the data on the drive effectively irrecoverable. --- but, if the NSA is after you for violating the Nuclear Secrets Act, all bets are off.
Donate old USB drives to help victims of torture (Score:5, Informative)
I am collecting old USB flash drives for the Center for Victims of Torture [cvt.org]'s 2009 Sneakernet Campaign.
If you are looking to get rid of old Flash drives you can go ahead and send them to:
Beth Wickum
Director of Volunteer Services
The Center for Victims of Torture
717 E. River Parkway
Minneapolis, MN 55455
After hearing about a lack of networks in many places where CVT operates we discussed the use of flash drives to transfer information. At this point my inner geek jumped up and screamed: "It's a sneakernet!" My co-workers hadn't heard the term before and thought it catchy enough to make part of the marketing for a campaign to solicit used flash drives to send to CVT locations overseas as well as partner organizations. The idea is simple, send CVT your tired, poor, and old flash drives. I'll scrub them and clean them up and make them ready to give away. No personal information will stay on a donated drive.
Customize a gun holster/fannypack w/ the magnets? (Score:3, Interesting)
My daily carry piece (with CCW permit) lives in a fanny pack held closed with the magnets out of a couple of old 17gig Maxtor 3.5" drives. I ditched the zipper in favor of that setup, and it's a lot faster :).
Convince Linux distros to move to drive images (Score:3, Interesting)
Work to convince the big distros of the world -- I'm looking at you Ubuntu -- to switch from using CD Rom Images as their prime mode of distribution to bootable flash/usb/ide disk images. Once you've tried it this way you will never go back, and you will now have a use for little drives.
Of course there are scripts that will turn the CD images into usb stick images, but they are time consuming taking away some of the time you save booting from a quicker medium. Instead of releasing a CD and a script to convert it, release a drive image and a script to turn that into an ISO, or release both.
(Plus, with writable media, it's easier to add a 2nd partition where the user can stuff drivers, localization scripts, answers to install questions etc.)
Then you could also donate all these media to linux distros who could fill them up with linux live disks and installs, and mail them out to people for postage.
The round file? (Score:3, Interesting)
Strip out the screws/magnets (always good for the hardware bin), and throw the rest away?
Re:ebay maybe? (Score:5, Interesting)
You could ebay them, if your time is worth nothing. To prep them, you'd have to mount them on a machine and securely wipe them (on a windows box download sdelete [microsoft.com] for free from sysinternals.) Use the -z option to wipe free space (critical for cleaning flash drives.)
Old drives are not as energy efficient as modern drives, so they cost more to spin -- a RAID would just be an expensive storage container. So unless you have a need for old, small drives (say an old, small machine) the safest advice would be to destroy them.
I like playing with neodymium magnets, so I take my drives apart and harvest them. Bending and flexing the platters will render them unreadable by almost anyone but the NSA, so unless you're protecting treasonable secrets, it's probably not worth the effort to do much more damage than that. (Be careful, glass platters don't flex - they shatter.) If you are that paranoid, heating them beyond their Curie point will absolutely destroy any stored information.
Re:ebay maybe? (Score:5, Informative)
Or just do
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk bs=1k
It hasn't been successfully recovered from, to my knowledge
Re:ebay maybe? (Score:5, Informative)
It hasn't been successfully recovered from, to my knowledge
It can't be, on any drive made this century and most drives from the last decade of the previous one. If you've got confidential data stored on old drives that use MFM recording (not necessarily an MFM interface) then you might need to worry.
Playing with Magnets (Score:3, Funny)
A friend of mine loves old harddrives. They have a lot of super heavyduty magnets in them. To my knowledge he just dismantles the drive and then sticks'm to his fridge but ... either way, ubermagnets are fun!
Re:ebay maybe? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you feel the need, but so far, no one has even done zeros.
http://16systems.com/zero/ [16systems.com]
Super strong fridge magnets (Score:5, Interesting)
I have taken apart many 2 to 10 gigers, those magnets are STRONG.
Stick them on the fridge ask someone to get one off and give it to you. Its fun trying to see them try.
http://www.computer-hardware-explained.com/images/hard-drive-magnet.jpg [computer-h...lained.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Then use TrueCrypt to create an encrypted partition
You mean if I fill a disk with 0's, I should TrueCrypt all the zeros.
Re:ebay maybe? (Score:5, Funny)
However, be advised that this may affect the resale value.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Even worse, they could randomly come together and create something worse like kidde porn or Windows ME.
Re:ebay maybe? (Score:5, Informative)
Why are you relying on sdelete instead of something like DBAN [dban.org]?
USB keys can be quite useful, even in small - think backup (PGP, SSH, etc) keyring, a convenient way of putting anti-malware software onto an infected computer that has been pulled off the network, etc. Despite having several multi-gigabyte flash drives, I keep a 32 meg drive around just for copying MBAM and friends onto infected machines for doing cleanups.
Offsite backup (Score:5, Insightful)
Old drives are not as energy efficient as modern drives, so they cost more to spin -- a RAID would just be an expensive storage container
Exactly -- which is why I'm right now in the process of doing just that. I'm building a RAID 6 on my five old 250GB drives, and when I'm done, I'm going to remove them, individually vacuum-seal them and silica gel packets with my food sealer, duct tape the bundle together, and ship it off across the country as an offsite backup. ;)
Are there better things that could be done with them? Probably. Is there a better way to do offsite backups? Probably. But I have them and I need an offsite backup, so why not? Certainly seems a better use than dissecting them for fun.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Lost them from *using* them at altitude, I'd imagine. That's a well-known issue. The spindle system relies on air pressure to keep the heads at the right height off the disk. Spin it at too low of a pressure and you get a head crash.
I'm not going to be spinning the drives in vacuum bags ;)
magnets (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In both cases (IDE/SATA and most modern SCSI drives which actually all do maintain an internal badblocks list (and a finite store of reserve blocks - i.e. high-capacity magnetic disks have been doing internal levelling for a while too), and wear-levelled flash drives), there is some risk of data recovery from blacklisted sectors that won't ever be wiped subsequent to their blacklisting. i.e. just because the drive can't/won't use the block anymore, even to write random data to it, doesn't mean the appropri
Re:ebay maybe? (Score:4, Informative)
"All recently made hard disks have a built in secure erase function that erases on the disk level."
Re:A great idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
Valhalla awaits:
, Platter sure, heads swift
glorious memory
failed us not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For massive media, maybe 512MB is small. Movies and such, no way, I agree there.
On the other hand, my 512MB card has massive amounts of e-books, saved web pages that have since disappeared off the net, tiddlywikis of my personal information, backups of gnucash files and web sites I've developed over the years ...
A small SD can be functional too. I write my NaNoWriMos on one and carry it around with me along with a keychain CD card reader. Any time the inspiration hits me, I can plug in to any computer wi
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The funniest thing about this comment is that it shows up immediately after an anonymous coward listing several things he'd like to do with the old equipment.
I'll second that. And, if you are worried about it, wipe the data using something like dban's boot-n-nuke software, then donate to a local charity. I h
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Really.
You could, for example, hold one in your hand and imagine a Beowulf cluster of 'these'.
Re: (Score:3)
"Windows in old buildings have glass which is thicker at the bottom than at the top because of the glacial migration. "
False -- try again.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've heard a figure of something like 10 years for reliable storage of data on flash memory. Again, I don't have the **** link, and this may change as the technology advances anyway. But it doesn't sound like a fantastic long-term bet.
Somewhat grudgingly as someone who dislikes waste, I have to agree with you; a lot of this stuff isn't worth the hassle of keeping and