Hard Disk Failure

[Jeff Kinz]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2006 at 07:31:28PM -0500, Ben Scott wrote:
> On 2/25/06, Jeff Kinz <jkinz at kinz.org> wrote:
> > A long time ago, working on a contract for equipment destined to be
> > delivered to the NSA I heard a rumor about the procedure that you had to
> > go through to remove the hard drive from an NSA building:
> >
> > Basically the drive was disassembled, the "rust" was sanded from the
> > platters, the platters were shredded, and all of the "rust" and shredded
> > platter material were placed in a crucible and melted down.the drive can
> > now be removed from the building.
> 
>   Hard drive platters aren't "rusty" at all; they typically have a
> mirror finish.  Perhaps that was a reference to the magnetic coatings

Yes it was , hence the "quotes" "around" "the" "rust"

> on the platters; while not iron, I can sorta see an analogy there.

Sorta?  Sorta?  Just for that I'm not going to tell the story about the
NSA secretary who moved her desk phone 11 inches closer to her.  :P !

                       and lost her job. 

>   Sanitizing procedures for disks containing TOP SECRET data require
> one to obliterate the recording medium.  For hard disks, that means
> either sanding down the surfaces of the platters, or melting down the
> entire platter.  Shredding doesn't really enter the picture; it's not
> required in addition to that, and is not sufficient by itself.

C'mon Ben, Do you really think the NSA is going to tell us if they shred
their drives?  Then they wouldn't be able to smoke out parties trying
recover int. from the used hard drives sold by the gov't anymore... :-)

"Being paranoid, Its not just a job, Its a hell of a lot of fun! " 
(The obnoxious intelligence officer that dropped in on M*A*S*H)

-- 
Jeff "Don't quote me" Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.
speech recognition software may have been used to screw up this e-mail

Someone tell Monica that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

	            ba-da bing! 

          (Thank you, I'll be here all week, try the veal.)