Hey guys, You may be right that nobody would look. It's more the administration at the school that's concerned, and they want me to make sure the data's absolutely gone. I just want to leave on a good note so I'm doing what they want of me.
The one machine I know that I will probably have to do the complete wipe to is the French teacher's, as she always wrote personal notes to doctors and whatnot on it. Maybe I should see if there's anything that looks confidential on the computers and tag those to be wiped. The group I get to wipe this afernoon came from a chem lab. These are probably fine, as I know that basically all that was loaded on them was HyperCard and a few science department things (that may have helped me in high school chem--one of my weaker subjects back in the day). I just know that the one computer I wipe normally will be the one in a million that gets hacked...it's another application of Murphy's Law, which seems to affect our IT department. I have an old version of Norton that I can use for the older Macs (LC 550's in particular) and I guess the rest of them I can zero the data with Drive Setup if the drive looks like it's got personal stuff. Anything that has a title such as "Letter to Dr. Smith" is reason for wiping, as is anything that may say "Faculty Social Security Numbers" or "Mrs. Brown's Christmas Card List". I do have twenty Macs from the SE on up coming in from an outside source, and some of these were home machines. They'll get wiped no matter what. Scott --- Nat Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > These are all very good techniques to use if you are > really worried > about it. But do you really want to spend the time? > Not to say I > don't completely respect the ideals of protecting > what is considered > private information. > > First, I think it comes back to John Niven's point > about anybody > actually bothering. And if they did, what is the > most damaging > information that could be recovered? Student > grades? Who is going to > care except for the student in question? > > A while back I inherited 40 Macintosh computers > (mostly SEs) from the > University of Washington when they decided to clean > house. The folks > at the UW did not even bother to wipe the disks at > all. I acquired 40 > university computers with disks full of student, > teacher, and personnel > information combined with various reports, essays, > and recommendation > letters. Most of the machines belonged to teachers > evidently, but > there were a few lab machines in the mix. > > In the midst of all this, there is virtually no > information at all that > could be used to any ill end. Even on the teachers > computers', the > worst thing I found was on a Centris 650 that > obviously had belonged to > an administrator of some sort that listed various > professors' salaries > from 1986 through 1991. While mildly educational on > the average > Radiology professor's salary 20 years ago, there was > little else the > information could be used for aside for satisfying > the urge to be > really nosey. > > No SS or credit card numbers, or bank information. > Names and > addresses, sure, but you can get those looking in > the phonebook, no? I > ended up wiping most of them myself. Even if I had > wanted to, it would > have taken forever to look at everything on 40 > different computer > systems. > > anyway, the point is, I would not worry about > wasting large amounts of > time doing "Government-level" wipes on a bunch of > school computers when > it's 99% probable they don't contain much > information that could be > used for anything damaging. If you know for a fact > some of them might > have been used to store credit card information or > things of that > nature, I would concentrate my time doing thorough > wipes of those > particular disks and settle with regular formats on > the rest of them. > Though I find the possibility of any 'bad' > information highly unlikely > if these are computers from any kind of public > school system. > Especially if a large university didn't even see it > worth their time to > wipe anything. > > The bottom line is most people don't care enough to > try. And if they > do, they're going to be wasting their time. After > all, it's not like > these are computers from some kind of accounting > office. > > -Nat > > > On Wednesday, July 6, 2005, at 08:34 PM, Peter da > Silva wrote: > > >> What would be a way to completely erase these > drives > >> so some undelete utility wouldn't pick up > anything > >> from our school? > > > > So long as you aren't worried about someone > disassembling the drives > > so they can use analog techniques... > > > > If you just delete everything THEN fill the disk > up with a bunch > > of files from another disk, and do that a couple > of times, it's > > gonna be pretty unlikely there will be any > unscrambled sectors > > containing useful info. > > > > You can try that and then run your undeleter and > see what's left. > > > > > > > -- > Compact Macs is sponsored by > <http://lowendmac.com/>. > > Support Low End Mac > <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> > > Compact Macs list info: > <http://lowendmac.com/lists/compact.shtml> > --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; > Send list messages to: > <mailto:[email protected]> > To unsubscribe, email: > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For digest mode, email: > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subscription questions: > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/compact.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> > > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > iPod Accessories for Less > at 1-800-iPOD.COM > Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal > www.1800ipod.com > --------------------------------------------------------------- > ____________________________________________________ Sell on Yahoo! 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