Some companies I work for have PCs laying around...

[star_pilot475]

1 minute ago, NineEyeRon said:

I wrote the policy that states we cannot give away PCs or even sell them.

 

First issue is data of course, second is what happens if it goes wrong? We can’t have people coming back to complain their PCs don’t work.

 

We use a reputable data destruction provide and a electronic equipment recycler instead. 

Yeah this company probably doesn’t, as I’ve seen these PCs sit around collect dust for about 2-3 years now. 

[steelo]

8 minutes ago, star_pilot475 said:

Yeah this company probably doesn’t, as I’ve seen these PCs sit around collect dust for about 2-3 years now. 

I remember years ago bouncing off the walls as a kid when my Uncle brought me home a 286 laptop from his workplace (Xerox) with Windows 3.0 and maybe 2 megabytes of RAM...I thought, "Wow my first laptop!" Then I realized how worthless it really was when Pentiums and Win95 were the 'norm'...LOL

 

Still was fun to tinker with though!

[star_pilot475]

2 minutes ago, steelo said:

I remember years ago bouncing off the walls when my Uncle brought me a 286 laptop from his workplace (Xerox) with Windows 3.0 and maybe 2 megabytes of RAM...I thought, "Wow my first laptop!" LOL. 

That’s pretty awesome!

[Kisai]

On 6/17/2019 at 6:58 PM, CUDAcores89 said:

 

Otherwise the hard drives are given a three-pass zeroing according to DoD standards. Dead drives are punched through to prevent data recovery.

 

 

At the office, before the machines are recycled I was given conflicting information, (because likely someone doesn't want to pay me to sit there watching "now on pass 1/4" on the machines to wipe them.) Basically there's three easy ways to wipe the machine at the office if the office doesn't trust the recycler:

 

1. DART, just boot the stick and select Secure Wipe (DoD 5220.22-M). This is fine for all Mechanical drives that work, it is NOT for SSD's. If it FAILS, the drive is damaged and should also be physically destroyed (as quoted above)

 

2. Use the BIOS secure wipe (Available on HP systems with a bios later than 2011, Dell systems after 2015), this is also DOD 5220.22-M, and will correctly erase SATA SSD's as well. It also tends to be faster than DART. These do not and are not designed to erase NVMe SSD's.

 

3. A Linux boot disc/usb drive and dd with dev/random or dev/zero, and is also not for SSD's. This can be turned into a DOD 5220.22-M by alternating between dev/zero, dev/urandom and dev/zero again. 

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX bs=1M 

Then verify it's erased with:

pv -tpreb /dev/sdX | od | head

Replace X above with the right drive letter.

 

The only correct way to wipe a SSD depends on the drive. A SATA SSD drive can be sent an ATA Secure erase command, and only costs one erase cycle, but has to be done with the BIOS or a manufacturer-specific utility. A DoD erase like above will cost 3 or 4 erase cycles. 

hdparm --user-master u --security-erase p /dev/sdX

NVMe drives, using a recent Linux boot disc/usb drive:

nvme format -s1 /dev/nvme0n1

 

This will send the secure erase command. -s2 will do a cryptographic erase.

 

Unless a drive is actually a self-encrypted (SED) drive, this should be all that is necessary.

 

If a business really wants to ensure that the data is destroyed forever, the physical destruction has to come after the secure wipe, as data can be recovered from physically destroyed devices in all kinds of conditions. For SSD's, removing the PCB and tossing it into a paper shredder (ones that let you toss cd's and floppy disks in it), or even just breaking the chips off by folding the SSD's PCB. 

 

The SSD in a used laptop might be more valuable than the entire laptop itself.