Pull the drive and bring it to the Depot, although I’m volunteering their services without authorization. They send disks to Secure Shred for destruction.


On Jun 25, 2014, at 10:36 AM, Helen Read <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I have a 6.5 year old Windows (Vista) desktop computer at home that upped and died a few weeks ago. Really really dead. (Fortunately I had made a full Windows backup three days before it croaked and was able to recover everything I needed and copy to my new replacement computer. Yay!)
>
> The deceased computer has two hard drives, the second being a hidden mirror of the first. Supposedly it would run off the hidden drive if the primary disk failed, or make use of both drives in tandem, and for all I know if might have done that when the computer was on its last legs. When one attempts to boot the computer, there is briefly displayed some diagnostic info showing Drive 0 as "Degraded", and Drive 1 "Failure".
>
> I was able to boot off a disk and run KillDisk to kill Drive 0, but unfortunately KillDisk does not see Drive 1, which may be in a worse state than Drive 0. (There may be other hardware problems as well. The machine was running extremely hot when I ran KillDisk on Drive 0, so I shut it down after one pass for fear of something burning. Seriously. It had that burning wires smell.)
>
> So before sending the computer off to recycling, what can I do about Drive 1, which may or may not have personal (and likely UVM) information still on it? The drive may be pretty well fried at this point, but for all I know there still could be recoverable information on it.
>
> --
> Helen Read
> Senior Lecturer
> Department of Mathematics & Statistics
> University of Vermont

Andrew Hendrickson
CAS IT Administrator
UVM, College of Arts & Sciences
438 College Street #206
Burlington, VT
05405

802-656-7971
802-656-4529 (fax)

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