My Hard Drive Died - Podnutz

My Hard Drive Died #5 – Overwritten Hard Drives

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Hosted by Steve Cherubino and Scott Moulton of MyHardDriveDied.com.

In this show we cover:

  • Story about the Keynote at The Computer Forensic Show – www.techfusion.com
    • Discussion about overwritten hard drives and how and why people think there is some magic machine that can recover data
      • REDIRECTION of bad blocks leaving data on the hard drive that is not overwritten
        • How you can properly overwrite current hard drives

          • Topics Discussed

          • Computer Forensics Show‘s keynote speaker, described how overwritten data was restored, but the conference was not anywhere about that.
          • Back in 80’s Drives worked like floppies making the recovery of overwritten data was maybe possible, with a very high error rate.
          • Hard Drives that had been made about 10 years ago are a completely different thing, making it more impossible to recover overwritten data.
          • An equipment called a Magnetic Microscope to try to recover data.
          • An other equipment called Spin Stand to try to recover data.
          • Disks have a “reserved area” to store information from the bad block, also called P-list
          • A G-list is a list of bad blocks for the disk not to use them again.
          • A good idea is to look for the S.M.A.R.T. results before the HD crashes.
          • If there’s a S.M.A.R.T. warning it would be a good idea to change your drive.
          • How to Properly Overwrite HD? Use the ATA Command to erase and overwrite HDs, doing a DoD sanitation.
          • A program written by Dr. Gordon Hughes from the Center for Magnetic Recording Research
          • A software tool used is Boot and Nuke (DBAN)
          • Tools to recover data, PC300, Atola, among others.
          • Data Recovery classes.
          • Is it ok to freeze a Hard Drive? Scott says it’s not the best solution, it might cause damage the drive, but sometimes it might work.
          • Maybe try the refrigerator first before the freezer, not to cause to big of a temperature change.
          • Tip to use instead of freezing: use a USB cooler (small refrigerators) to cool the HD and keep it cool, Scott uses an aluminum bay and hook up a couple of these ceramic pieces to keep the HD cool.

            • Thanks, and out -click-

            Show Notes by Luis Perez from GeekForce Guatemala

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