Dell laptop - what's it worth?

[esox]

MOD hard drives are used in runways!!

I thought any sensitive info on government computers were disposed of by leaving them on train seats?

 

[popuptoaster]

i guess i should have mentioned i F disk em before repartioning, i think its still pretty safe for most people, no one is gonna try to hard to retrive a normal persons data.

 

[robert.saunders]

... no one is gonna try to hard to retrive a normal persons data.

I ain't normal

 

[Antharro]

6400s were great machines - I bought three when they were new, got one heck of a discount on them even then. Sold two of them in the last year - first one for £500, the second for £300.

Right now I'd give you trade price of £100 for it, DBAN or MHDD it (secure erase the hard drive), do a clean installation of Windows and stick it on eBay with a £300 sticker.

Just because you can buy laptops for £300 brand new doesn't mean they're any good. I'd much rather have a slightly older laptop that was the top of its range than some new cheap heap of junk that I wouldn't expect to last a day outside of its warranty.

Regarding erasing data; I used to work for one of the UK's leading data recovery firms and unless you're willing to invest a significant amount of time and money in both hardware and software, you won't get data back from a drive that's been erased with either DBAN or MHDD.

 

[Spinal]

i think its still pretty safe for most people, no one is gonna try to hard to retrive a normal persons data.

There was a group of students (and there still is a group of security experts I believe) that buy "dead" and secondhand hard drives on eBay and other areas with the intention of seeing what data they can retrieve.

Weren't the statistics 1 in 3 trash cans get rumaged through?

M.

 

[R2D2]

Regarding erasing data; I used to work for one of the UK's leading data recovery firms and unless you're willing to invest a significant amount of time and money in both hardware and software, you won't get data back from a drive that's been erased with either DBAN or MHDD.

I've always used Eraser. I wiped the directory 35 times and the rest 3 times before selling them on. Is that enough?

 

[HughJarse]

I use a 6 inch nail - or a screwdriver.

 

[oldcro]

i bet i could still get data back from charred platters

Only way to be sure no one will be able to get any data is to either keep it in a safe for ever and ever and ever or cut it up into tiny pieces and sprinkle it over a large area.

I did not mean charring the disc as in a fire, I meant melting the whole drive into a solid blob. I don't think you could retrieve any data easily from it then.

 

[moakesr]

MOD hard drives are used in runways!!

Depends on the classification of data the drive held.

Disassembly, degaussing and dipping the platters in a suitable acid is used if the classification isn't too high.

What happens with the really secret squirrel stuff, I don't know, and I don't want to know, maybe it really does end up in runways!

 

[Gollom]

i bet i could still get data back from charred platters

You are right. A friend of mine worked for DEC (Digital Equipment) when the Open University had a severe fire at their Millton Keynes headquarters. He and his team had one shot at the admissions data on a RA60 600GB platter (I used to sell them at £15K!! ) rescued from the centre of the fire. Forget the exact figures but I know that they managed to recover well over 50% of the data before the disk collapsed. We are talking a severly damange disk drive here!

 

[A210AMG]

I would guess around £75 to £100

They are so cheap new now £300 gets you a good usable laptop.

Hard drives formatted I'm sure we use a program such as Kill Disk and it runs over the drive up to 20 times.

At work we are able to recoer most peoples data even after normal formats etc.