Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

backblaze.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 79 posts

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#31

Post by StavrosK »

3pt14159 wrote: post #24
raverbashing wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree Unless you're dealing with top-secret material, losing the encryption key is the best way Or just dd around 5x - 50x (or more if you're paranoid) its size to the disk - if you want to further reuse it. No, you won't have a meaningful amount of data remaining on the disk and extracting it requires special software/hardware. Unless you're dealing with data that makes the disk price irrelevant, you can follow th…

A bitcoin wallet is not top-secret material and I don't trust myself not to fuck up overwriting the entire disk. I'd rather just take an angle grinder to it and not worry about it.

If your Bitcoin wallet is on your hard drive, recovery after overwrite is the least of your worries.

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#32

Post by StavrosK »

rdl wrote: post #18

My policy is: First: 1) use encryption from day one. As long as you can be assured the encryption never failed (somehow repartitioning and writing bare data to the drive), it is a viable option to treat the drive as non-sensitive, depending on what it was used for. Then: 2) use ATA secure erase to wipe it. This command, if you believe it was implemented correctly, should wipe the entire drive, including reserved spac…

Step 1.5: Use something that overwrites everything, for good measure. I'd say this is more important than #1, since encryption is more likely to fail than overwriting (I once discovered that my encrypted volume had actually been set up as unencrypted, and I wasn't encrypting the things I thought I was).

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#33

Post by hvidgaard »

3pt14159 wrote: post #24
raverbashing wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree Unless you're dealing with top-secret material, losing the encryption key is the best way Or just dd around 5x - 50x (or more if you're paranoid) its size to the disk - if you want to further reuse it. No, you won't have a meaningful amount of data remaining on the disk and extracting it requires special software/hardware. Unless you're dealing with data that makes the disk price irrelevant, you can follow th…

A bitcoin wallet is not top-secret material and I don't trust myself not to fuck up overwriting the entire disk. I'd rather just take an angle grinder to it and not worry about it.

Or just transfer all the btc to a new wallet. It's something you should be ready to do anyway, if your wallet is assumed compromised at any point.

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#35

Post by kijin »

phire wrote: post #30
kijin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thermite sounds a bit excessive for a typical home or office. How about baking in an oven or roasting on a grill? Is modern flash memory fragile enough to be destroyed irreversibly at 230C/450F?

Maybe. They have to be rated to survive those temperatures for short periods of time during reflow soldering. Apparently flash memory is rated to last a minimum of 10 hours baking at 125c, or 360 hours at 85c. The decay is exponential, so in theory 30-60min at 230c should do a lot more damage. But I'm not sure you should rely on it, that 10 hours @ 125c number is for when the bit-errors exceed the capabilities of the…

How about microwave? Powerful charges at every exposed terminal looks like a nice way to fry some chips. Maybe submerge the whole PCB in a bowl of salt water to prevent sparks flying everywhere...

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#37

Post by brians »

rdl wrote: post #19
kalleboo wrote: post #12

They missed "blend it". Looks pretty effective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fXGVAadp5k

Blending (specifically in a dedicated blender jar, not one you ever use for food) is the best way to destroy SD cards I've found, and apparently a major fruit company has done this in the past. It's also a solid excuse to buy a blendtec 800 with sound enclosure for the office -- way quieter than any shredder. And good for making drinks.

Don't forget the airtight glove bag. If you can smell the SSD, you're inhaling the SSD.

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#39

Post by rwmj »

marcosdumay wrote: post #28
comboy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean filling your disk with some random bits? Is white noise already illegal?

Yes, in any place where you are forced to disclose encryption keys.

    dd if=/dev/urandom of=secret_terror_plan.doc
In the UK that command could get you imprisoned indefinitely, especially if you're under suspicion for other reasons.

Re: How to securely recycle or dispose of your SSD

#40

Post by koliber »

Can someone explain to me how doing a low-level write of all zeroes to the disk is not effective, but rewriting the data in encrypted form is effective?

Let's say I have a 100Gb SSD disc and it contains 25Gb of files. If I read in my unencrypted files, encrypt them and write them back to the SSD, they won't necessarily end up in the same physical place as the unencrypted files. Won't the unencrypted files still be there, in unreferenced sectors (do SSD's have sectors?).

I would imagine that writing all zeroes at a low level would do a better job of removing data that is already there.

Post reply on HN