Don’t make this mistake when changing hard drives

• When changing your hard drive, be sure to perform a real data cleaning
• Secure Data Recovery has bought 100 users and has been able to recover millions of files from previous owners
• Quick formats aren’t enough: you have to overwrite the data

Like your smartphone, hard drives can hold sensitive information. But unfortunately, it seems that many people make the mistake of not cleaning the hard drive properly before replacing it, so that the data can still be recovered. In a recent article, our colleagues from TechRadar reported on an experience done by Secure Data Recovery, a data recovery specialist. Basically, he bought 100 random hard drives and found out that the data was still recoverable in large part.

In essence, the company was able to recover data from 69 hard drives. However, the majority of these files came from a single hard drive, which contained 3.1 million. However, according to TechRadar, for this recovery, Secure Data Recovery would have used only “reasonable” means, indicating that these are not complex operations. The point of this experiment was to highlight the fact that people don’t always clean old hard drives so well that only 1 out of 100 is encrypted, making the data unreadable.

Hard drives must be properly cleaned

Regarding the recovered data, Secure Data Recovery claims that measures have been taken to maintain its confidentiality. “We followed our usual, rigorous data handling practices, which include over 100 security checks. We never looked at the contents of any recovered files and securely erased the data after the exercise.”Reassure the company.

For those who are going to replace a hard drive, Jake Reznik, director of lab operations at Secure Data Recovery, explains that it can be reused. But he recommends using hard drive cleaning software Overwrites the original data in random patterns over multiple passes. In a blog post, the company mentions that even after a quick format, deleted data can still (theoretically) be recovered on unallocated spaces on the disk.

Unlike its quick counterpart, a full format erases all data on the device by overwriting it with zeros., we read in this post. Jake Resnick also discusses more drastic measures that involve physically destroying the hard drive, such as demagnetizing, or even “disassembling” the hard drive. practices that companies can use.

Even a router can leak information

Anyway, the experience highlights the fact that when they resell electronics, they don’t always care about their data. In addition to thoroughly cleaning hard drives, laptops, or smartphones before reselling them, you should be careful when disposing of or reselling a router.

A few weeks ago, we reported on a similar experiment conducted by ESET, but with used routers. I’ve found that some resale routers are not cleaned properly and can therefore leak sensitive business information.