[BBLISA] DDS Tape Erasure/Destruction Services?

[David Allan]

My preferred method of destruction of tapes is to crack the case open (a
vise helps a lot with that part, although hammer-on-concrete works quickly
and easily also), take out the tape reel, saw the reel in half (again use
a vise to hold the reel) and shuffle the resulting 2" bits of tape.  It's
not perfect, but in my case, the data retrieval would cost vastly more
than the resulting data.

It takes about 5 minutes per tape, maybe less, if you use a vise, although
having said that, I've got dozens of tapes, floppies & hard drives, too,
so if anybody does know of a company that does data destruction of mixed
media cheaply, I'd be interested, too.  I ran a Google search about a
month ago and found nothing that looked both reliable and even close to
inexpensive.

Perhaps we could have a BBLISA data destruction party.

Dave


On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, Steve Revilak wrote:

> > Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 17:08:50 -0400
> > From: Theo Van Dinter <felicity at kluge.net>
> > To: Back Bay LISA <bblisa at bblisa.org>
> > Subject: [BBLISA] DDS Tape Erasure/Destruction Services?
>
> > I have dozens of DDS and DDS2 tapes which I used to use for backups of my
> > old personal server.  I'd like to get rid of all of them, but they still
> > have data on there that I'd prefer not to let other people have access to.
> >
> > Is there a local (I'm in between Boston and Worcester) company I could
> > bring these tapes to so that the data will be made non-recoverable?
> > Preferably inexpensively?
> >
> > Basically I'm paranoid but I'm cheap. ;)
> >
> > Alternately, is disassembling/smashing the tapes considered "good enough"?
> > I really don't think people are going to be going after my tapes in my
> > trash, but ...
>
>
> >From having attempted to splice DDS tapes back together, I would say
> that it falls somewhere between exceedingly difficult and freakin'
> impossible.  I think physical destruction would be fine.
>
> Slide the bottom of the cartridge back, flip up the front door, rip
> off a few arm lengths of tape, crinkle it up, and toss it in the
> trash.
>
> If you're more paranoid than that, get a ball peen hammer, a pair of
> safety goggles and have a blast :)
>
> Steve
>
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