Disk Erasing Is Boring

I have a stack of older (and not so old) hard drives sitting in my apartment. I have wanted to sell them or just get rid of them for a while. My problem is I have data on them, or had data on them. I am crazy about security. Sometimes not crazy enough, but when dealing with selling drives that once held my personal data on them, I am crazy. So what to do?

I know the multiple ways of removing data from disks. None of them include just formating the drive and selling it. I have wanted to invest in an electromagnet that degausses stuff. But that just screams Geek! it is also costly. I could do what Jay did and just copy lots of stuff onto the disks before formatting them and selling them.

I settled for a free program that will overwrite disks with random data. It is called eraser. it is a free open source product from Sourceforge.net. It is not a fast solution. Of course I selected the department of defense standard scheme for overwriting data. I don’t have state secrets on those drives, but I figured if it is good enough for the CIA to overwrite disks in this way, it is good enough for me. To be honest I selected the lowest DOD spec, but I figured that would be enough. Now I just wait while these drives get written over.

eBay Selling Round 2

With Jayson leading the way, I have decided to complete my eBay selling spree by going through my old computer crap stuff and putting it up for sale. Lets face it, I am not going to use 4 extra CD burners, or 18 Gig ultra wide SCSI drives any time soon. They are perfectly good gear, but I have no use for them. What person needs 4 Adaptec 39160 cards? They just accumulated over time. Now it is time to sell them and earn some cash.

Black Friday

Yesterday was black friday. The busiest shopping day of the year. As a rule for most of my adult life I attempt to avoid malls and most stores between Thanksgiving and New Years. I can buy stuff (gifts, etc) online. I cannot stand the crazy crowds at the store.

Today I got up early to head to the office (yes I had the day off, but jay and I needed to kill some time). Jay had to package some stuff up of his to ship, and we needed to kill some time till we went to my dad’s to fix his computer. On the way we hit the Best Buy near work to check out the “one day only” sales they had. We got there like 11AM and the store was mobbed. We saw how long both main checkout lines were and we were out of that store in 2 minutes.

Jay and I rebuilt my dad’s computer. Didn’t fix his problem. I got the Treo 300 he has to sync 9 out of 10 times. The 10th time (or so) it crashes still. Instead of a blue screen it just reboots itself. I totally removed his epocrates sync software. That crashed the computer all the time. I am trying to convince him to maybe look at a newer palm. The Treo 300 is running version 3.5x of the palm os. My Treo 600 that is not even the newest out there anymore is running palm os 5.2x something. So far he is not ready to change.

We hung out at my parents for a while, saw my niece. She was stingy with the hugs today. Dam kids. She did give me a hug and kiss goodbye. She salvaged her Hanukkah, lucky girl:) We headed back to Long Island City to return Jay’s dad’s car. We hit the white castle. Mmmm white castle. I never go there, but it is good.

Ended up the night hanging out at his place, and then Gretchen, Jay, and I went to see Christmas with the Kranks. it was funny, if not predictable. Nice entertainment. I just got home a little while ago.

Jay and Gretchen are off to hunt for a Super Walmart tomorrow. They are going to do food shopping / Christmas shopping. They wanted me to go, but I was not up for a long car ride. I was out Thursday and Friday, so I want to lay around today (it is early Saturday morning). I know I have no reason to feel this way, but sometimes I feel like a third wheel when hanging around with them. I need a girlfriend, that is probably why I feel that way. I know gretchen doesn’t mind me hanging out (she would tell me if it did bother her), but sometimes I get self conscious and think differently. And since they read this, I wont get sappy!

It is late, and I am not tired. Man my sleep habits are going to be messed up by the end of this weekend…