[Misc] HDD CLearing

[Sfish460]

Hello everyone. New to this forum but have been working in the field for almost 15 years. I have a question about hard drives in general and more specifically the Copystar CS4530. The machine is being sent back to the leasing company and the customer wants us to wipe the HDD of any confidential information. What does the CS4530 use the hard drive for? Some store documents on there and some machines only use them for spooling documents for printing. I normally don't work on CS machines and I don't want to disable the machine because as I said this isn't our machine, it belongs to the leasing company.

Also, in print mode it has a C0240 code. It does copy. I went in test mode and it has a format HDD mode. Does that really format, like the same as a pc format?

Thanks everyone.
Stacey

[xeroid]

If the customer wants the HDD for security reasons thats fine. They are obligated by their lease to return the machine in working order which means they bear the cost of the HDD replacement. You may be able to find another used HDD that could be installed and formatted reducing their expense which I believe is around $400 for a new OEM replacement, $50 for a used compatible drive plus labor to sort out the configuration and formatting. The most expensive option is to originally purchase the Data Security Kit which they will likely balk at the cost of around 1K.

[shep]

we have a hard driver scrubber that we plug into the computer and put the hard drive in and it cleans it up for us. we tell our customers that the data security kit is recommended if they are worried about sensative information and if they want the hard drive scrubbed its a charge!!! and its expensive

[Sfish460]

We do reccommend the data security kit but the problem is people store sensitive material in the document scanning section. On the Sharp I just wipe the drive and that's it. The machine automatically reformats the drive and you're done. Since this was a competitor's machine and a model I'm not familiar with I wanted to make sure wiping the drive wouldn't kill the machine like it does on the bizhubs. Those you have to do a physical then logical format in the machine to have it run again.

I wiped the copystar machine, got a C0640 code. I ran a U906 to clear it then did a U024 to format the drive and it's working like a charm.

We charge $150 for a wipe at our office and $250 to have it done in the field.

[xeroid]

Very interesting topic and replies for this emerging issue with our customers. I read the terms format ,wipe, and scrub relative to solutions. It is my understanding and belief that a simple format with or without deleting the original partition will not assure sensitive document recovery protection for the customer. I have heard of HDD scrubbers but have no experience or documentation of protection and cost for such options. The simplest and surest solution for our small business has been to give them back their drive so that they may smash it with a hammer if they so choose to do so to ensure no one will have the ability to recover any of their documents. We are willing to work with them to locate a compatible replacement drive at a reasonable cost to avoid the perception of profit mongers for charging an enormous price for a part they know costs much less out of the box at BestBuy. Thanks to all for sharing on this topic that comes up more and more as an issue these days.

[Gar the pilot]

Re: HDD CLearing

Is the hard drives in these the size of the lap-tops or full size? The taskalfa 400ci ( our parts machine)has full size with the sata cables, I wonder if one of these would work?
Thanks Gar

[Sfish460]

Re: HDD CLearing

Either size will work and almost any size larger than 40Gb will work. Most all newer ones use the laptop 2.5 just for energy and size savings.

[kkendric]

Re: HDD CLearing

Just performing a format (U24) will not insure that the documents on the drive are unreadable. On your older machines(4530 12 plus years old) a drive over 80Gb will not work. The newer machines do not seem to have a size limitation. Most all Kyocera machines only use the HDD for storage. You would not want to use a 2.5 inch drive for a 3.5 inch drive as the mounting is different. To sanitize a drive you need software and equipment to insure that all data has been destroyed.

[Sfish460]

Re: HDD CLearing

Yes thank you for clarifying. I only started working with Kyocera around the past 4 years. I have no idea what the older ones use. The newer ones have an end of lease HDD erase that is Supposed to erase the hard drive and make it unrecoverable. I don't know if that would pass the NIST FACTA, HIPPA, ect standards.

[Josh93]

Re: HDD CLearing

Formatting just erases information regarding the file system on the drive.

Basically removing the "map" to the information, how ever the information is still inside the device and can be recovered if you know how, though I don't know why any one would go to the effort for a copier HDD.

But in saying this some customers are weary, and we do a binary wipe. Different to a format in not only does it remove file directory's but it re-writes the binary code a number of times.

EG: 11001100010010 becomes 0000000000000000 once, and then 111111111111111111 and eventually back to zero, making the information unrecoverable by any means, the more the number of wipes the drive goes through, the higher the security. Takes a while though, that's a lot of zeros and ones.

You can get these applications online, but some of them cost a bit of $$, but they are easy enough to find.

That or you can just hit the thing with a hammer a few times.

EDIT- Just thought I should add, if you get one of these programs, pull all the HD's out of an old PC, hook it up to a monitor and boot the machine off the disk. That way you just have to pull the HD's out of the copier, hook it up to the PC, and run the program, then when its finished, reformat the HD, and chuck it back in the copier.

Don't attach anything to the machine you don't want to be wiped, and for goodness sake don't hook it up to a network... I don't know what would happen but I just wouldn't.

Josh.

[CompyTech]

Re: HDD CLearing

That or you can just hit the thing with a hammer a few times.



Josh.

I like to drill a few holes through them, then toss em. I've done the hammer thing too(most efficient nuclear option & the funnest)... I've had some platters shatter like glass others just bend up like metal.

[Sfish460]

Re: HDD CLearing

We bought a hydraulic crusher which is impressive to watch and fun to find things to crush with. Oddly, the spindle center usually pops right out through the center of the platters. It also creates a very satisfying crunching noise as it destroys the drives..