Drive Cleaner / Data Recovery software

[Mark H]

Just now he's very close to not working anywhere........

[guccij]

I put the key in car, start it up and drive it off instead.

I find depositing one child at the roadside every 10 miles or so does the same trick ... not for nothing do we have an MPV.

[leehack]

But their bike will still be left on the drive!

[guccij]

Er no - our friendly local druggie stole it

[grantglendinnin]

If we're talkin' about a fifteen hundred quid laptop, why not make certain it's unreadable. Don't waste £30 quid on software, waste it on a new hard drive. Simply replace the drives seems the logical solution now

[Mark H]

Er no - our friendly local druggie stole it

This does not fit in well with our Switzerland fantasy. I'm thinking cheese, snow, logs, bottles of strong drink with little bits of gold foil floating round, you know?

[Mark H]

If we're talkin' about a fifteen hundred quid laptop, why not make certain it's unreadable. Don't waste £30 quid on software, waste it on a new hard drive. Simply replace the drives seems the logical solution now

Interesting thought, but I'm sure the software will be good enough until the PC meets Mr Logsplitter in about 3 years.........

[guccij]

This does not fit in well with our Switzerland fantasy. I'm thinking cheese, snow, logs, bottles of strong drink with little bits of gold foil floating round, you know?

It wasn't in Switzerland (where our bikes live in the cellar along with the wine, skis, spiders and when it rains heavily, about a foot of water). It was taken from outside our house in NW London despite it being locked round the pillar and to the wheelie bin with three separate locks

PS It did snow today though in our village in CH. Check out the webcams here and here.

[Mark H]

Ah, my fantasy remains intact (I'll overlook the "spiders and when it rains heavily, about a foot of water"). Thank you Jules

[completerookie]

have you ever taken a hammer to an old hard disk, its quite satisfying when you do.

but at work, we have an even nicer way of stopping the little blighters getting hold of our data . . .

we partition it into two or more drives by taking an oxy-acetelene torch to it.
it's carefully placed in our large garage workshop vice and then we watch while all our hard work goes up in smoke,

I defy anyone to get any data off it,
talk to your local one man garage, I'm sure they'll be up for a "challenge"

If you are worried about the recycling implications, then let it cool down, put it in your re-cyling wheelie bin when youv'e finished, and the local authority will happily recycle it for you along with the beer bottes you had the night before (just be careful not to get yoghurt from the pots on the outer casing) - they just don't like that !

[NormanRouxel]

goes up in smoke

I hope you're well upwind. There are some pretty exotic chemicals in HDD's.

I'll bet the spooks could still get some data of any bits of platter that were left. I remember the days of 9 track mag-tape when there was a little optical gadget like a jewellers loupe that you could press to the tape and see the data tracks (it had a polarised outer filter that was susceptible to magnetic fields and another one inside that was away from said field).

Scale that up a bit to electron microscopy and other more esoteric imaging and even the data left inside powered down chips is available.

[grantglendinnin]

I thought I had the cold, hence the sniffing.

But when push comes to shove, I investigated, and found this was the root cause of what I could smell: