[ILUG] wiping a faulty hard disk

[Gareth Eason]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> On Thu 09 Aug 2007, O'Leary Patrick wrote:
> 
>>          I have a few faulty hard disks which i need to return to the
>> supplier for under guarantee replacement. The problem is that they have an
>> OS installed on them along with some sensitive data. 
> 
> I don't understand this passion for deleting data on old disks.
> Is it really likely that the disk manufacturer will scan you disk
> and steal your secrets?

	You're quite right - it's extremely unlikely that anyone would look at your data.

	However, the related impact from trolling public newsgroups with e-mails, 
almost equally unlikely to be read may be a factor people should consider. I 
mean, if at least some disk manufacturers didn't look at the data on disks, 
that's Bruce Schneier out of a job, right there...

	If you genuinely don't understand the concepts of 'secret', 'security' and 
'data recovery', have a leaf through http://www.schneier.com/blog/

	Best regards,
	-->Gar