topic Re: Computer sellers in Buying

Computer sellers

colin01101958 — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 23:41:10 GMT

seller of computer that persistently put "hard drive removed for security reasons" they should put the truth and say i can get more for the hard drive salling it by itself as there are stacks of hard drive wip programs out there that do TOP SECURITY WIPS so be truthful

Kind Regards

Re: Computer sellers

the_hawk* — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:26:12 GMT

That is true that you can get programs to remove data, but you can also get programs to recover it.

You will more than likely find they are ex government computers picked up in bulk lots for auctions and they all have the HDDs removed after a number of embarrassing incidents where computers where sold with operating systems and peoples details still on them.

The policy is HDD is removed and destroyed

Re: Computer sellers

patchoo78 — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 07:13:20 GMT

I would be pretty cheesed off if I bought a refurbished PC without a hard drive and had to buy my own plus an operating system on top of that..

Op shops here sell MIcrosoft refurbished PCs and they have the hard drive, so did mine when I bought it from another site..

Re: Computer sellers

colin01101958 — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 08:32:27 GMT

yes i understand what you are saying but if a hard drive goes through a full security wipe that is 7 Times over written with nothing it doesn't matter what program you have you can not recover anything and you don't have to destroy another drive i am someone who believes in recycling but that is me

Regards

Re: Computer sellers

colin01101958 — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:33:07 GMT

??????????????????????????

Re: Computer sellers

dylan11235813 — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:34:46 GMT

are u sure it is 7 times

Re: Computer sellers

flashback_deals — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:24:16 GMT

When my old computer died, my accountant told me to pull out the hard drive in case I had an audit done instead of fixing it, formatting it and selling it in the computer

Some people do have good reasons for keeping the hard drive

Re: Computer sellers

wilzencomp — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:26:22 GMT

as a seller of refurbished computers when we get the computers from the auctions (government auctions all Hard drives are removed and destroyed ) So what I do is have a stack of 80gb Hdds available to install back in, also the statement of colin's that we get more for the hard drive out of the computer is very wrong as a 80gb to a 200gb the most you will pay is $15-$20 plus postage from ebay even less in the shop, where if you put these hard drives in a computer with windows xp OS on it for example you increase your computers value by at least $70 that's $50 more than selling it on it's own.

So you see that argument doesn't work in regards to Colin's view, I hope that clears up some head scratching

Re: Computer sellers

colin01101958 — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:28:38 GMT

ye i am positive i have two programs that do this and there is nothing whatsoever left on the drive and if the program can't do the 7 it will reject the drive as faulty

Cheers

Re: Computer sellers

colin01101958 — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:36:03 GMT

i understand that if there is no hard drive in the computer when you get it that is different it is not you doing the removal of the drive.

The government do that because the people preparing the computers sall don't do their jobs properly to do 7 wips it takes a long time so they are cutting corners and only doing 2 maybe 3 times.

so the government just destroys them it is safer this i can understand i would not like my information being left on a hard drive.

Cheers

Re: Computer sellers

dylan11235813 — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:22:31 GMT

ye i am positive i have two programs that do this and there is nothing whatsoever left on the drive and if the program can't do the 7 it will reject the drive as faulty

Cheers

I actually think that a drive can be rewritten 100000 times and there will still be remnants of the original data. It may be difficult to retrieve though.

I doubt any government agency would be bothered trying to wipe them, they would (and should) play it safe and destroy them.

Re: Computer sellers

davewil1964 — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 05:31:25 GMT

I always thought that the government (ASIO, CIA, etc) could still retrieve data from anything wiped by a commercially available product.

Given the cost of storage these days, it wouldn't concern me.