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The practice of "writing zeros" is the only was to ensure complete deletion without going the physical route. That writes 0s on every sector 3 times.

Remember it is POSSIBLE to view old files with a sector editor, but short of you having anything THAT sensitive on your drive, nobody cares. And if you have anything that sensitive, lock it in a bank safe deposit box.

PS. My practice is that I keep my hard drives. I must have a dozen laying around from over the years. When I junk a computer the drive is removed.


I smashed the hell out of my car today. When the cops came I told him "Officer, that guy was BOTH texting and drinking a beer." The cop said "Sir, he has every right to do that. I mean, it's HIS living room..."
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Israeli intelligence service reports that the best way to preserve data integrity on an old drive is to run over it with a tank. Srsly.


"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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Mac, the local Goodwill store is sounding like the easiest alternative. Hopefully they can sell them and make a buck for the people down on their luck, and if not, I wonder if they would dispose of them properly?

I don't have any personal info on the Mac, just and old BiaB and some styles. By the time I got the eMac, the PC was my main computer. So over-writing the space with ones and zeros multiple times should be sufficient.

Notes


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I used to work, day job, as electrical engineer for an outfit that wrote a lot of software involved in the defense industry as well as many a proprietary private outfit.

Writing zeros on a drive was prohibited. For good reason. There is a way to read the leftover magnetic field that used to be ones...

So we'd give away the older computers, but each and every one, the hard drives were removed -- and the shop machinist would drill at least two 1/4" holes right through the sides of the drives and through the internal platters.

Only then could the drives be disposed of.

I still do that with any of my drives that may have personal identification or the likes ever stored on 'em.


--Mac

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Quote:

Mac, the local Goodwill store is sounding like the easiest alternative. Hopefully they can sell them and make a buck for the people down on their luck, and if not, I wonder if they would dispose of them properly?

I don't have any personal info on the Mac, just and old BiaB and some styles. By the time I got the eMac, the PC was my main computer. So over-writing the space with ones and zeros multiple times should be sufficient.

Notes




Bob, there are MIL-grade erasure algorithms available free on the web. Look for one used by the Canadian Military. They are not popular for most users because a security-grade wipe can take nearly a month. LOL.

There was a very similar thread about a year ago. You may want to search for it and prevent deja vu all over again.

Last edited by Don Gaynor; 11/19/12 12:34 PM.
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Since I don't have any personal info on the Mac, I think I'll try one of those apps that write 'random' ones and zeros multiple times. The program on my PC overwrites 35 times. http://eraser.heidi.ie/

I only bought the eMac to test my styles on the Mac before selling them. In the old days, the style files were not so compatible between the two platforms. I would often have to downsize my PC styles for the Mac.

So I'll delete BiaB and my styles and look for something that will overwrite the then unused space on the HD 35 times or so. That should be sufficient to keep anyone from getting BiaB illegally.

I may try Craigslist first, just in case there is a computer collector in the area. I figure I should ask for a minimal price, just to keep the non-serious away. If no one responds, I'll go Goodwill.

What do you think? $10 each all 3 for $25?

It's sad to think that something I spent so much money for is now for all practical purposes worthless. So I try not to think about that too much

Notes

Last edited by Notes Norton; 11/20/12 06:35 AM.

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I'm sure that Mac paid for itself by now, eh?

Don't lament.

Celebrate.



--Mac

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Quote:

I'm sure that Mac paid for itself by now, eh?

Don't lament.

Celebrate.



--Mac



Thanks, Mac. You are correct. It did what it needed to do and was a faithful friend indeed.

It just seems a little sad to me that it's still clean, has a beautiful picture, works perfectly, and is worth so little.

I guess it's the musician in me. I bought it as a musical instrument. I still have a 1924 silver plated King Alto sax that has the voice of an angel. It plays any modern piece of music and all it needs is a little coaxing from my lip to play in tune with itself. I bought it used for $50 in the 1960s.

The Atari's were faithful friends and have some nostalgic value. I bought the first one myself. It was my first music computer (I had a TI99/4A before that). The second Atari was given to me by one of my good customers. He was switching to the PC and didn't know what to do with the Atari, so he asked me if I wanted a backup. I was selling styles for PC, Mac and Atari at the time so I said "Sure". (almost wrote Shure - a musician mistake).

I don't want to send them to the junk pile. I'd rather they go to someone who has at least some use for them.

That's why I decided to clean them up, put them on Craigslist first, and charge a nominal fee just to keep someone who will take anything for free, (whether they want it or not).

I have a very small studio (converted bedroom of a home built in 1950) and I have some use for the real-estate the computers are taking up. Plus, like a musical instrument, they should be used.

I started writing my user styles on the Atari. When PG Music introduced the StyleMaker app, I decided to try my hand at it. So I wrote a couple of dozen styles, gave them to my musician friends, and they said they liked them better than the PG styles so I took out an ad in Electronic Musician.

One day Peter Gannon called and offered to make them work on the PC to expand my market (Thanks Peter). This showed me what kind of person Peter is, and probably a good reason why he is successful. Later a approached the owners of a couple of other auto-accompaniment software apps. They both frowned on a third party person enhancing their product, but one of them contracted me to write a couple of styles for them. I got paid less than they were worth - but I'm not complaining, I agreed to that.

BiaB/PC was still a DOS program back when Peter Called. So soon after I bought a Win 3.1 with DOS 5 PC and a little "toaster" Macintosh.

So while I'm nostalgic about my old tools/friends, I know it's time for them to go. I just want them to go to a good home

Notes


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Quote:

....I was selling styles for PC, Mac and Atari at the time so I said "Sure". (almost wrote Shure - a musician mistake).....

Notes




I make that same mistake all the time, except I actually type it out and see the auto-correct underlining shure and have to go back and fix it!

If the Ataris are working, I would also point folks to your Craigslist from the various Atari ST user communities that are still out there.

-Scott

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Yes, the Atari is still a sought-after item and those who are still running older programs that they love will indeed pay a little bit more to get a spare or replace one that is dying or whatever.


Bars 'n Pipes,


--Mac

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Quote:

Writing zeros on a drive was prohibited. For good reason. There is a way to read the leftover magnetic field that used to be ones...

So we'd give away the older computers, but each and every one, the hard drives were removed -- and the shop machinist would drill at least two 1/4" holes right through the sides of the drives and through the internal platters.

Only then could the drives be disposed of.

I still do that with any of my drives that may have personal identification or the likes ever stored on 'em.




This is the correct way to do it, period.


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You sure its not condescending or arrogant?

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Mac,

Quote:

You sure it’s not condescending or arrogant?




I’m sure it’s not! I saw the asinine comment on the other thread.

Since you’ve been the recipient of a couple these lately, I’m gonna go out on a limb and make a wild assed guess and say that these guys can’t stand the fact that you always know what you’re talking about and the only recourse they have is to make comments like that.

I hope you don’t let a few individuals keep you from posting what are always helpful and informative comments.

I, for one, appreciate your advice and I'm glad you take the time to share what you've learned on the forum.

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Re: Hard Drive Disposal...

Last time I did this I first had my at the time 7 year old son watch me take the cover off the drive - if I recall, I had to drill out some rivets or odd-head screws.

Then I explained how the read/write heads use electricity to leave information on the different discs inside.

Then we proceeded to beat the living daylights out of it with alternating hammer swings from me and from him. To date, he still loves tearing apart spent electronics equipment. There's innards of a busted portable CD player on top of his bookshelf as I type this. Bless his heart! Makes his daddy proud. He's also the old-school jazz fan, but lately has even taken to 80's/90's era Sanborn and Yellowjackets from Dad's olde CD archive. I troll the local Goodwill stores for jazz CDs for him. Latest one I got was from Laura Newman, a local killer sax player whom I've actually met. She has offered to help me pick out a used Tenor at Wedgle's pawn in Denver.

-Scott

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Quote:

Mac,

Quote:

You sure it’s not condescending or arrogant?




I’m sure it’s not! I saw the asinine comment on the other thread.

Since you’ve been the recipient of a couple these lately, I’m gonna go out on a limb and make a wild assed guess and say that these guys can’t stand the fact that you always know what you’re talking about and the only recourse they have is to make comments like that.

I hope you don’t let a few individuals keep you from posting what are always helpful and informative comments.

I, for one, appreciate your advice and I'm glad you take the time to share what you've learned on the forum.




+1 Amico!

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I’m gonna go out on a limb and make a wild assed guess and say that these guys can’t stand the fact that you always know what you’re talking about and the only recourse they have is to make comments like that.




Thanks for the laugh! You really DID go out on a limb for that one!

His knowledge has NEVER been in question as far as I know, just the tone of the posts at times......just like a few of YOUR'S the last few months. So in the words of a famous forum poster..."Deal with it..."

Yes it is hard to REALLY get the tone of a post when there is no face to face expression's to glean clues from, but then again it is not hard to "read" a condescending reply...like this one....

Either way I enjoy reading the forum & learning from ya folks!


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jcspro40,

I couldn’t possibly give less of a rat’s ass about what you think of me, but I do find it asinine for you to make snarky comments to Mac when he’s always stepping forward to help anyone he can on the forum.

I've never known him to be condescending or arrogant.

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Hey,

Its ALL good.


--Mac

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Mac is OK with me anytime, even if disagrees with me

Since the Atari computers have no hard drive, that isn't an issue. They were nice computers in their day. The Amiga was a decent computer as well.

I used to have a 40MB hard drive for an Atari. It was almost as big as a 4 rack space PA Power amp, and it took about a minute to rotate to speed. Then writing data made nice clicking noises as the head moved around. One day it no longer clicked, fortunately I kept duplicates of everything important on floppy disks (remember those).

The Mac has no personal information from me that isn't public on the Internet. It does have my name as the registered owner, anybody know how to get that off or change it?

I also do not have any of my customer's information on it. I don't even keep the customers numbers on my computers at home. The shopping cart and authorization company takes care of all that, I get the order with the card number removed (my choice in the options) and I also have the option of removing the customer's entire order off the secure server at the shopping cart company. I think it's a good idea to do that for everything that is settled and cleared. Although I chose the cart because of its security features and record, if it isn't there, it can't be hacked.

So for Band-in-a-Box and my disks I think overwriting 35 times with random ones and zeros is enough. I think it would be easier to buy BiaB than to look for traces of magnetic residue that have been overwritten 35 times with either a one or a zero.

Other than that all that is on the computer is some open source freeware that I downloaded and I'll leave that on. Plus AOL and I only used that to send my files from the PC to the Mac back in the dial-up days. And after seeing how time consuming that was, I ended up using CD-RW for that task.

As soon as I can figure out how to get my name off the computer, I'll finish cleaning it up and put it on Craigslist. Perhaps I'll start a little higher in price and if they don't sell reduce it.

Thanks again for all the help and opinions.

Notes


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Re: Selling old but good stuff: Maybe you need to ask more. I once had a pretty good portable compressor--Sears 6-1/2 HP, 33 gallon, 220 volt, 120 PSI. Once I was divorced I no longer needed it. I tried to sell it a couple of times for $75 and got no bites. Nothing at all. It was just taking up space in storage. Finally I had a yard sale, marked it at $150 and had an immediate buyer--haggled "down" to $125. Go figure.

So describe your old computers as "vintage," ask real money for them, and see what happens.


"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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