on old hard disks

Any reason they're so outrageously erxpensive?

Reply to
a7yvm109gf5d1
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A. They're not made any more. At least in any volume. B. Old ones are destroyed to protect data. So they are getting scarce. Art

Reply to
Artemus

Fine, but where's the demand for old hard drives?

Reply to
a7yvm109gf5d1

Artemus wrote:

FTFY

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Look for "urban legend".

A Linux CD provides all the tools necessary to avoid this stupidity.

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".dd.if-dev-zero.of-dev*-*"

Even Windoze users can get numerous tools for this task.

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The best-known is Darik's Boot And Nuke (DBAN).

Reply to
JeffM

Direct swap ins for archaic gear that is on cost no object maintenance. The Shuttles had some pretty ancient electronics in that towards the end of life had to scavenge parts from around the planet.

You also get some incredibly weird memory chip pricing for rare old components that are essential to keep certain critical systems running.

Regards, Martin Brown

Reply to
Martin Brown

.

Yes, but that would be for specific model #s. This is across the board. How many Space Shuttles are out there anyways, and how many different kinds of hard drives does it need? (I would suspect they come in pairs, mounted opposite each other...)

Besides, wouldn't that mean there's a market for flash->old HD interface adapters? At the prices I've seen, there could be a market there!

Reply to
a7yvm109gf5d1

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None of that matters. Who is going to risk their job by not destroying their businesses old HD's? What if some new technology comes along in the future, no matter how unlikely, which CAN recover the data? There is very little upside and huge downside to not destroying the HD's. The average computer user destroys theirs just to be safe too. Art

Reply to
Artemus

Since about 15 years a lot of test equipment has a hard drive build in. I recently acquired a Lecroy LWA420 which is basically a 486 PC with a hard drive to store the software. The first thing I did was making an image of the hard drive and see if the machine would still run if wrote the image to another hard drive and install it into the LW420. It worked so I'm safe for now :-) Maybe I'll put a compact flash card in it.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
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Reply to
Nico Coesel

Hardly likely, and subtracts from what little credence you thought you had here.

Cite!

Reply to
OutsideObserver

u

What's so unlikely? On the one hand, you have people arguing that 20 year old hard drives should sell for 600$+ because they're used in cost-no-object machines. But now you're skeptical?

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l

Reply to
a7yvm109gf5d1

People who don't throw out computers after 5 years - or who don't get computers till other people throw them out after 5 or more years, for instance. Of course, whether or not the original owner hung onto the hard disk to protect their data, you're on borrowed time after 5 years on a hard disk anyway. I have 10 year old ones still running, but I have plenty that crapped out long before that, too.

I have a friend who thought he was going to play with an old RAID system until he figured out that to fill the thing with the PATA disks it takes would cost considerably more than various SATA RAID options (and hold less), simply because PATA disks have become functionally obsolete, and thus overpriced per capacity WRT SATA disks - and SCSI is worse.

For both data security and nice magnets, I don't send any complete hard drives out the door. I also don't buy used hard drives, and the price of PATA drives is fueling the obsolescence of systems that require them in my environment. When a replacement hard drive is a significant fraction of the cost of a whole new system, there has to be a darn good reason not to replace the whole system. And this is from a place where we stretch a dime as far as it can go...

There's likely a niche for adapter boards - Can't say I've looked for any such before now, though I have found a P/S ATA USB external enclosure very handy.

Yup, they are out there, pretty cheaply - perhaps a route to go if that is your "old hard drive" issue. Mind you, the one I just looked at goes the "wrong way" (PATA disk to SATA bus) for what I'd see using it for, but that will be what some folks want.

PATA -> CF versions also exist, but I think I'd go for PATA -> SDHC in that case, though there seem to be fewer of those out there. I've had two CF failures (or 100% of the two CFs I own have failed, though the first one was repaired and is working, and I suppose the second one will get repaired or replaced) and no failures thus far on SDHC. That, and SDHC occupies the SATA-equivalent niche in memory cards, while CF occupies the PATA-equivalent....

--
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Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.
Reply to
Ecnerwal
[about disk erasure tools]

Any job can be at risk for any reason, including for destruction of property. State law, for instance, keeps the local university staff from destroying the disk hardware when they declare it surplus.

Learning to erase data, and verify erasure, is just another job skill.

Reply to
whit3rd

That the shuttle contains anything that was not made right here in the US.

I have an original 10MB Tandon Full height 5.25" HD from the original XT platform.

It is worth $10.

The day AFTER I die, it will be worth $5000 as a museum piece.

snip

That hardly qualifies as "planet wide" (the US ebay reference), and I'll bet that all actual purchases are items from folks right here in the US.

Reply to
OutsideObserver

Some want them for the rather large ferrite magnets.

Reply to
Robert Baer

whit3rd wrote:

...then there are the geniuses who think that putting 1 or 2 bullets into a drive is all it takes

--leaving the majority of the data intact.

Those who have overwritten an audio cassette with a zero-level input or white noise and played that back are aware of how effective that is. Those who have overwritten the overwrite are REALLY aware.

If you've ever dealt with Mil-spec anything, you'll realize that you won't find a more overkill/wasteful lot than the US Military. Even they say that all it takes is overwriting *several* times.

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Its time for technologists everywhere to stop regurgitating this silly, wasteful destruction mythology. The ONLY time that destruction of a PLATTER is apt/necessary is when the drive mechanics have failed completely.

Reply to
JeffM

.

They're not ferrite. Besides, old speakers are just as good a source. And do you know how many neodymium magnets you can buy on eBay for the price of one 600$ hard drive? Makes no sense at all.

Reply to
a7yvm109gf5d1

Canadarm?

Reply to
krw

Wrong. We buy payload delivery SERVICES from them, not hardware.

Reply to
OutsideObserver

You're an idiot, DimBulb.

Reply to
krw

Funny. If I am so 'dim' (and bulbous) as you say, how is it that I shame you with such ease?

Tell me, old boy, what hardware are we buying from the former USSR, now "Russia" (and various 'neighboring states')?

I know we are buying booster services because they have already sent our guys up to the ISS and returned them. Arianne still fires most of the satellites (Eutelsat W7 in 10/2010)and space exploration probes up, though Long Beach is still in the boost game occasionally.

Got any more gems of wisdom? Stand and deliver, boy.

Reply to
OutsideObserver

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