I am after some guidance to ANY ACO policy in place for disposal of Computers and their HDD’s, i am under the idea that they can be binned or sold off at the Sqn OC’s discretion, after a simple reformat or factory reset has been preformed. However some believe that the HDD’s must be destroyed beyond all measure in such a way that CM HDD would be, however i think this is major overkill as the MOST a Sqn Computer would have on it is maybe OFFICIAL - Personal IF THAT.
I don’t know of any policy with regards to the Air Cadets but common sense says destroy your hard drives with a sledge hammer.
Having studied and practiced data recovery, getting data off a formatted hard drive is really simple. When you consider the risks of identity theft etc… just get the sledge hammer out.
yeah i did think about data recovery, smashing and salvaging parts sounds like a last resort, I thought about DBAN, or i can run them into work and get the Degausser out to melt them just seems a waste when there could be other Sqns less fortunate IT wise who we could donate them too, HDD Included, could always
If you know where they’re going and who they’re going to be used by then a decent format should be fine. If you don’t know them, don’t give them the hard drives.
Obviously there will be no squadron data held on the machines so you can dispose of them with impunity (in accordance with WEEE directives)
What I do for work is remove any hard drives and dispose of those separately (by sticking them through an industrial shredder) while the rest of the hardware gets passed on to a disposal company. If shredding is a bit hard-core there are drive-wiping applications that delete and overwrite any data - you’ll need to have the drive on a separate machine to wipe it fully and it takes a while.
Taking the drive apart and smashing it with a hammer is probably fine for our needs.
To be honest the price of smaller hard drives is so low at the minute you could donate the machines without hard drives and they could just buy new ones.
Yes, because if they loose it/don’t dispose of it later on, and your data is somehow recoverable (which it can be!!) then you are still responsible for the original data set.
Not as expensive as a fine from the Information Commissioner
Besides, you could transfer the license from one HDD to another if it stays within the same unit.
Using a tool like DBAN is sufficient for magnetic hard drives. The recommendation for solid state drives e.g. SSDs and USB drives is they are destroyed.
Some brain fart in our HQ told us about information sticking to the monitors for prolonged use of the computer as we leave our computers on standby mode when logging off whether that is true or not I don’t know, however if the CO says smash them we smash em.
You can get screen burn on phosphors if static information has been displayed for an extended period, so there may be some relevance but I suspect you are being fed obsolete information for a situation which is not relevant.
just seems a waste when there could be other Sqns less fortunate IT wise who we could donate them too, HDD Included, could always