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A client is clearing out her office and found a Powerbook 170 which she is going to have recycled. She is concerned that there is old financial data on the HD that she would not like to let leave her hands with any data intact.
My first thought would be to remove the HD and physically destroy it (taking it to its bare parts and cutting the HD platter(s) with a large metal cutter I have access to - a la pizza slices). Does anyone know how difficult HD extraction on this laptop would be? Anyone have a link of a procedure that would help with this?
If extraction is not possible, what course of action should I do to securely wipe out the drive?
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My first question would be; how OLD is this "financial data", and if it's as old as the 170, who's gonna care?
Assuming that there really is something of "value" on the drive...
Boot from a system floppy that can boot the drive, then use disk utility (or whatever it was called.. I'm drawing a blank..) to wipe the drive.
If you don't have a system floppy for a PowerBook 170 (and I wouldn't blame you for not...), then just start taking screws out until you can get to the drive...
then hit the drive with a hammer a few times.
The NSA could extract the broken platters, and "find" some data on them, but I'm pretty dang sure no one else is gonna care enough to pay the money for such a service!
Hope this helps.
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[quote Paul F.]My first question would be; how OLD is this "financial data", and if it's as old as the 170, who's gonna care?
I agree, but my client seems to care and she is on the "A" list of who I am helping these days.
Personally, I think that wiping out with a reinstall would suffice, but I have educated her on keeping her data secure and she is a good student. I will see if I can help her find her boot disks.
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I've swapped HD's on a number of 180's and it's not a tough job...especially if you don't care about it working again. Unscrew the bottom of the case and there she is.
I have a neighbor that refused to put an old IIci out in the trash without me physically removing the drive first. Then she wanted me to destroy the drive too so i cut the ribbon cable that goes into the casing and she still wasn't happy. That broke ass drive is still sitting on her window sill (next to her Mini!) and will probably be buried with her when she goes. I guess old Solitaire scores are important to some people.
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[quote Filliam H. Muffman]It is SCSI. It would take a very talented non-Mac user several hours to figure it out. If the machine still starts up, it might take me 5 minutes to start imaging the drive after I located a HDI-30 to 25 pin cable.
If you have the right Torx drivers, it should not take more than 10 minutes to rip it apart.
http://www.apple-collection.com/CarPos/P..._B_170.pdf
The drive is in the right side of the plam rest. If you just want to make it really hard to recover data, just drill through it about 1.5" from the lower and right side.
C O O L ! ! ! ! ! !
That helps!!
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Make sure you take the battery out first. X(
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Use the Boot Disks, or create new ones. I believe the app was called "Drive Setup". You'll be looking for something like "Multiple Pass Rewrite" or something similar. It's basically the same a writing zeros on the hard drive in Disk Utility in OS X. I forget the terminology, it's been many years since I used 7.5.
If you need it, I think 7.5.3 is available free from Apple.
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Drive Setup! That was it!
I agree, but my client seems to care and she is on the "A" list of who I am helping these days.
Fair enough
I would probably use the torx driver and hammer method (just wear safety glasses.... flying plastic or metal bits can be dangerous).
