I'm a confirmed pack rat. I've got stacks of old utility-bill statements dating back to the 1980s. Alongside the boxes of ancient paper records in our attic are about a half dozen old PCs. The jewel of my "collection" is an original 60-MHz Pentium PC, complete with the famous floating-point bug. Well, it was famous in 1994.
One benefit of holding onto these PC relics is not worrying about their data falling into the wrong hands. (OK, I suppose a determined thief could break into our attic and walk off with the computer antiques, but I wish them luck finding the cables and peripherals required to bring the machines back to life.)
Not everyone is so attached to their old electronic equipment as I am. You probably know that you need to completely wipe or remove the hard drives from your PCs before you donate or recycle them. How to ensure that the data on the drives will be out of the bad guys' reach is another matter.
(On a related subject, don't ever let a computer repair shop hold onto your old hard drive if they replace it. And don't believe them if they say they returned the drive to the vendor. If they give you this spiel, call the cops and demand that they return the old hard drive to you, right then, right there.)
Free data-wiping program obliterates your data
If you want to keep the drive usable but totally erased, use the free Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN), which comes in a version that runs off floppy disks and USB flash drives and another that runs off a CD or a DVD. The program's interface won't win any awards, but DBAN has a solid reputation among security experts.
Attack the platter to render a hard-disk unreadable
No matter how thorough a data-wiping program is, the only way to be certain that a hard-drive's data is unrecoverable is by rendering the drive's platters unspinnable. I've heard and read all kinds of methods people use to destroy an old drive, some of which are downright dangerous.
Put it in a fire? There are lots of toxic chemicals in that gadget. Do you really want to be breathing them or otherwise releasing them into the environment? Microwaves are handy for destroying CDs and DVDs, but you'd have to cook a hard drive for a long, long time to blister the drive's platters.
Several Web sites suggest soaking the drive in diluted hydrochloric or muriatic acid. This might work, but you run the risk of burning yourself or breathing toxic fumes. Lots of people recommend breaking out the power tools and drilling several holes through the drive. You can achieve the same effect by pounding some nails through it, or simply by whacking the heck out of it with a hammer, sledge or otherwise.
I'm normally a big fan of brute-force methods, for the vicarious thrill if for no other reason. But the goal is to make sure you can't spin the drive's platters. There's a more subtle approach that achieves this, without necessarily requiring safety goggles.
I found a great step-by-step tutorial written by David Gewirtz that describes how to disassemble a drive, remove the platters (and other components, including the drive's magnets), and sand or grind the platter surfaces, which renders them unreadable.
David's method requires the use of TORX driver bits to remove the small screws holding the drive's case in place. These can set you back about $20, but you might be able to save the money by using a large, flat-head screwdriver to pry the case off.
David also suggests degaussing the platters by placing them between neodymium magnets before grinding their surfaces, which obliterates the data they hold. This strikes me as overkill, but I guess you can't be too careful when protecting your private data. Making wind chimes out of the degaussed and sanded platters, as David's wife did, is strictly optional.
The FreeAgent Go external hard drive by Seagate wins our coveted Editor's Choice award for three reasons: Design, cost per gigabyte, and speed. There are a ton of external drives out there to choose from, but we can definitely say that the FreeAgent Go takes the cake. Seagate offers the drive in multiple colors and capacities and the inexpensive price makes it perfect for users that need to access data on the run.
The FreeAgent Go is available in four colors (red, white, blue, and black) and with capacities up to 320 gigabytes. For our purposes, Seagate sent us a 320GB model to test that will run you $150, or $0.48 per gigabyte. In relation to their competitors' prices, the FreeAgent Go is dirt cheap- up until now, the typical price per GB ran around $0.56, so you're getting a great deal with the FreeAgent.
Read the full review of the Editor's Choice winning Seagate FreeAgent Go.
Despite industry leader Seagate's poor showing earlier this year, analysts say there's still plenty of demand for hard disk drives.
In the first quarter of 2008, HDD vendors shipped 137 million drives, which is 21 percent higher than the same quarter the year before, according to iSuppli, a market research company which keeps track of the industry. Those drives are primarily being snapped inside notebook PCs, other portable devices, desktops, and external drives.
(Credit:
Hitachi)
Things weren't looking so good when Seagate reported its earnings in April, and revenue was below what analysts were expecting. But the demand for HDDs wasn't the issue, according to iSuppli.
"Seagate's second-quarter net income did come in lower than expected, but this was not because of any decline in demand, but rather due to lower prices for its products," according to Krishna Chander, iSuppli's senior analyst for storage systems.
Vendors like Seagate can charge more for HDDs for notebooks than they can for desktops, and though desktop PCs shipments are down, notebook sales are doing very well. The PC industry got a good report last week when IDC and Gartner revealed data showing the worldwide PC industry growing at a healthy clip, despite economic uncertainty in the U.S.
What's interesting is that the report says demand for the traditional magnetic drives is still strong despite the advancement of flash-based solid-state drives. iSuppli says vendors are on track to ship 573 million drives by the end of this year, which represents 11 percent growth over last year's final tally.
Lower prices and bigger capacities are keeping HDDs competitive in the face of the increasing popularity of solid-state drives. Though NAND flash memory will also continue to get more affordable, iSuppli says traditional hard drives will stay ahead for now.
iVis HG21
(Credit: Canon)Canon today unveiled two new AVCHD camcorder models that will be available in Japan in September for the Japanese equivalent of about $1,300. The iVis models--the overseas version of the Vixia brand--will include an addition to the HF line of flash-based camcorders and a replacement for the HG10 hard-disk based unit.
IVis HF11
(Credit: Canon)The HF11 is a higher-end line mate for the popular HF10; it adds a higher bit-rate 24Mbps recording mode and an increase to 32GB built-in flash memory, up from 16GB. The hard-disk-based HG21 has the same innards as the HF10/11 and gets a boost to the 12x zoom lens from the HF series. It also gets a bump to a 60GB hard disk--to hold all those large 24Mbps bit-rate files--1,920x1,080 resolution, and the ability to record video to an SD card.
In the time of triplicates, shredders and burn cans were SOP for destroying records at embassies and military installations. Today, information stored on hard disk drives far forward on the battlefield demand other methods.
Fujitsu has come up with a way to dispose of your brigade's database of informers and cash payoffs in a hurry. The Fujitsu ME-P3M emergency degausser combines state of the art with a good ole' hand crank, allowing a drive to be wiped clean in 10 to 20 seconds--even absent electrical power, according to Jim Preasmyer, business development manager, Fujitsu Computer Products of America (click here for PDF).
(Credit:
Fujitsu Computer Products of America)
A degausser (PDF), named after researcher Carl Friedrich Gauss, generates a reverse (coercive) magnetic force to demagnetize HDDs, rendering stored data unreadable and unrecoverable "by any known technology."
The unit is a takeoff on the Fujitsu Mag EraSURE line, used by the legal, medical, and financial professions and anyone else wishing to avoid database disasters like the 2002 debacle in which 139 Veterans Administration Medical Center computers ended up in schools and on the open market, where they were later discovered to contain current VA medical records and credit card numbers.
DriveSavers, a premiere data recovery service, has certified that the Mag EraSURE renders all data on HDDs "unrecoverable by commercial means," according to Fujitsu.
So while there may be something satisfying about leaving the quintessential thermite grenade to melt its way through the server rack when the huey is holding on the roof, given the advanced state of contemporary computer forensics you may want to start cranking instead.
Dell will sell you a 128GB solid state drive for an unprecedented $649. But wait. An IDC report claims the performance gap between solid state drives and lower-cost high-performance hard disk drives is not that significant at the system level.
Solid state drive offered by Dell
(Credit: Dell Computer)Solid state drives are attracting more scrutiny as they increase in capacity and decrease in price. (Dell's $649 drive is a radical price drop since many drives with half the capacity still sell for more than $700.)
Solid state drives (SSDs) are considered to be generally more power efficient, faster, and in some respects more reliable than hard disk drives.
IDC tested 2.5-inch 7200 rpm desktop drives against SSDs and found that previous tests comparing SSDs and hard disk drives may be misleading, according to SearchStorage.com, which cited the IDC report.
"Many tests have been done comparing 4200 rpm hard drives to SSDs," said IDC analyst David Reinsel. "But 5400 rpm is now mainstream and even 7200 rpm disks are available." The IDC report says the performance gap between computers with 7200 rpm 2.5-inch drives and those with SSDs was smaller than expected because the performance of the entire system must be taken into account.
(It should be noted that 4200 rpm hard disk drives are sometimes used in comparative testing because 4200 rpm drives are offered along with SSDs in laptops such as the MacBook Air and Hewlett-Packard 2510p.)
IDC's Reinsel also said that system redesigns will be necessary in both PCs and enterprise storage systems to reap the full benefits of SSDs. One of the challenges is that SSDs generally write data more slowly than they read data.
In related news, The Tech Report also did benchmarking of SSDs and 2.5-inch hard disk drives rated at 5400 and 7200 rpm. Generally, the SSDs were faster (in some cases much faster) but not in every benchmark and not by that much in some benchmarks.
SSDs have received a lot more attention since companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba have adopted them as alternatives to hard disk drives in laptops. Lesser known is that SSDs are also being deployed by large corporations in server-related applications. Companies like Citibank and American Express peg server performance on IOPS or input/output operations per second where SSDs beat hard disk drives handily.
The IDC report follows other reviews that claim solid state drives (SSDs) are not as power efficient as manufacturers claim--though the power-efficiency testing methodology used by some review sites has been disputed by manufacturers.
IDC abstract here.
JVC Everio GZ-HD40
(Credit: JVC America)Updated 6/23/08 with information about the sensors.
In an interesting turn, JVC's newest hard-disk-based HD camcorders--the Everio GZ-HD40, GZ-HD30, and GZ-HD10--will support AVCHD in addition to its traditional MPEG-2 formats. This is a great idea, at least for the interim, since it theoretically provides you with more flexibility in your video-editing options--especially if its AVCHD files aren't supported right out of the gate--and allows it to deliver high bit rate video beyond the 24Mbps maximum for AVCHD. Plus, the camcorders include FireWire (i.Link) interfaces, which many of today's models have dropped, for dealing with MPEG-2's HDV-compatible datastream.
The three models also integrate new CMOS chips; I've been waiting to hear back from the company with some details about the chips both of the CMOS chips, a 1/4.5-inch, 1.75-megapixel version for the HD10 and a 1/3-inch, 2.68-megapixel version for the HD30/40 represent a significant switch for JVC, which usually uses low-resolution CCDs. The sensors for these models should be high enough resolution to deliver a decent HD image. However, the press information provided is odd. The press release states:
This CMOS uses proprietary interpolation technology based on what JVC developed for its 3CCD cameras. This algorithm makes it possible to generate virtual pixel data from the red, green, and blue physical pixels, thereby providing image information that actually surpasses what's required for 1,920x1,080 Full HD imaging, or for 1,440x1,080 imaging in the GZ-HD10.
But the sensors are "high resolution" enough that interpolation shouldn't be necessary. And not only is interpolation undesirable, generating the "virtual pixel data" from a single chip is far less useful than generating it from three chips that each capture those specific primaries.
The key details on the new models:
| GZ-HD40 | GZ-HD30 | GZ-HD10 | |
| Hard-disk size | 120GB | 80GB | 40GB |
| Format(s) | AVCHD and MPEG-2 | AVCHD and MPEG-2 | AVCHD |
| Sensors | 1/4.5-inch, 1.75 megapixels | 1/3-inch, 2.6 megapixels | 1/3-inch, 2.6 megapixels |
| Max video dimensions | 1920x1080 | 1920x1080 | 1440x1080 |
| Maximum bit rate at highest resolution | 17Mbps AVCHD 26.6Mbps MPEG-2 | 17Mbps AVCHD 26.6Mbps MPEG-2 | 17Mbps AVCHD |
| Hours recorded (highest/lowest quality) | 10/15 | 6/33 | 1/3.3 |
| Price | $1,299.95 | $999.95 | $799.95 |
Also, the GZ-HD40 comes bundled with a docking station. The three models are slated to ship in August.
On Sale Now: $699.95 - $749.98
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Panasonic HDC-SD100
(Credit: Panasonic)In an effort to improve upon the light sensitivity characteristics of its prosumer AVCHD camcorders, Panasonic has switched to a new three-chip MOS system dubbed "3MOS" for its newly announced HDC-SD100 and HDC-HS100 models. The company claims the new sensors provide about twice the photo-sensitive area as the CCDs used by its last-generation model, the HDC-SD9. However, Panasonic did not indicate the resolution of the chips; it's likely relatively low, as most three-chip solutions tend to be. As I guessed, the chips are fairly low resolution--520,000 pixels for 16:9 video--and they're tiny, 1/6-inch versions. The new models also have a new 12x zoom lens, extended over the 10x zoom in the SD9. (Since most of our complaints about the SD9 revolved around the lack of sharpness and poor low-light quality, I'm quite curious to see how the new models fare.)
Panasonic HDC-HS100
(Credit: Panasonic)As its name implies, the HDC-SD100 writes to SDHC flash-memory cards, while the HS100 can record to its 60GB hard disk as well as SDHC. They both provide a broad range of manual shooting capabilities, as well as Panasonic's Intelligent Auto mode, which incorporates face detection and Panasonic's Intelligent Contrast Control and Intelligent Scene Selection to optimize exposure and focus. And, as always, the units incorporate Panasonic's Advanced OIS optical image stabilization.
The two camcorders lie at the upper end of the price range for consumer HD models: $1,099.95 for the HDC-SD100 (which includes an 8GB SD card) and $1,299.95 for the HDC-HS100. (note: the original press release had the prices swapped; these are now correct.) Both are slated to ship in September; we expect to get our grubby little paws on one sooner than that, so stay tuned.
On Sale Now: $979.95
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(Credit:
OhGizmo)
Oliver North found out the hard way that erasing e-mail doesn't mean it's gone forever. And in more than two decades since, countless others have shown that they still hadn't learned that lesson.
But there is one foolproof way of confounding even the best IT sleuths: the "Hard Disk Crusher."
This no-nonsense machine from EDR Solutions does exactly what its name says, destroying a hard disk in as little as 10 seconds. "It basically 'drills' through the hard drive's spindles which physically creates ripples in the platters making it impossible to recover any data," OhGizmo says.
The Crusher can even work with an emergency hand pump in case your building is surrounded by enemy forces who have cut off the power. The only problem--and it's a big one--is its $11,500 price tag. For that kind of money, a few medium-range explosives would seem more cost-effective.
(Credit:
LaCie)
Ninjas, John Locke, and Bear Grylls take note: your active lifestyle have nothing on the LaCie Rugged Hard Disk. But even if you're not trekking through the trenches and sinister islands, you'll still appreciate LaCie's latest version of their rugged hard disk with an impressive 500GB capacity.
(Credit:
LaCie)
We loved the previous models so much that we gave them our much coveted Editors' Choice back in '06, and we're happy to see that LaCie stepped it up to an improved Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 2.5 inch internal hard drive. Like previous models, this also connects via USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800. Anyone making good use of the ruggedized body? We want to hear about how your LaCie Rugged Hard Drive withstood beats, stompings, animal attacks, elemental anomalies, and time travel.
The 500 GB LaCie Rugged Hard Disk is available now for $340 for the USB 2.0 model; $400 for the FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 model.
