[GTALUG] Ten grand for this?

[Howard Gibson]

On Sat, 19 Dec 2015 12:14:51 -0500
phiscock at ee.ryerson.ca wrote:

> Years ago, when the SAGE air defense system used drum memory units
> manufactured by Ferranti, they would be resurfaced periodically by being
> sent to Toronto - handcuffed to a human guard. The drum would be turned
> down on a lathe and the shavings collected into a bag by the human guard,
> and the drum then returned back into service.
> 
> I guess the bag thing was to ensure that no one could reconstruct the
> information from the shavings, which seems pretty improbable.

  This brings up the question...

  Why not throw the old hard drive into some old plastic bags, invite
some friends over and have a sledge hammer party.  This is a good
opportunity for any gun freaks out there. 

  I tried writing over an old hard drive using a Perl script.  The next
evening, I shut it down, and I re-wrote the program in C, and then it
worked reasonably fast.  I now have a wiped 6GB hard drive sitting in a
drawer somewhere.  


-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgibson at eol.ca
howard.gibson at teledyneoptech.com 
jhowardgibson at gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson