Comment on Do you encrypt your data drives?
h3ndrik@feddit.de 5 months agoAnd it has other benefits. For example a dying disk. You can just throw that out. I once tried to wipe such a disk and it’s a chore. It makes weird clicking noises and slows down to the point where it’d take years to overwrite it. Occasionally the SATA controller resets etc. And it won’t succeed at overwriting stuff. Sure I could go to the garage, get the power tools, put the hdd into a vise and delete everything with a combination of hammer and drill… But it’s much more convenient to have it encrypted and not care.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You take the disk out, drill once through it (use a metal bit).
Done.
24_at_the_withers@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Takes me about 2 seconds with a 5lb steel mallet.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Bold of you to assume sysadmins can wield a 5lb mallet. (I’m not completely sure what that is in real world weight).
h3ndrik@feddit.de 5 months ago
Sure. It’s just effort. I have to go fetch the power tools, fetch the drills, if I want to do it correctly also mount a vise or go fetch a piece of scrap wood and some clamps…
At work I’d additionally need 3 training courses to be allowed to operate the drill and visit the workshop. And it’ll still not be certified that the information is now gone.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 months ago
In an enterprise setting, it’s probably a bit of a hassle with everything having to follow some kind of process…
h3ndrik@feddit.de 5 months ago
Somehow they don’t trust the software developers with operating heavy machinery 😆
Anyways, I think we’re moving away from the topic… At work I didn’t encrypt harddisks anyways. They just put the servers into a special area in the datacenter that has a fence and a separate lock.
At home I just encrypt stuff so I don’t have to remember what I put where and handle things differently. Of course everything depends on the specific scenario and threat model. I have a bit of stuff archived on my server that isn’t around anymore, could be a copyright violation. I also have my complete life stored there, documents, finances, emails of a decade, pictures, backups of family members, passwords for emergency access to things. I also used to travel a lot with my laptop in the backpack and that can get stolen. At some point a long time ago I decided to encrypt my harddisks and stop worrying. Since at least 10 years there isn’t any speed penalty anymore and it takes like 20 seconds to set it up on Linux…
But I can also see why not everyone wants to do it this way.