Posted on 07/26/2009 1:46:23 PM PDT by poiuqwer
I suspect that China might be stealing our confidential data that is stored (or backed up) on external USB hard disks, such as those 1 TB commodities sold as Costco for $100.
Early this year, I bought two 1 TB external USB drives to backup my computer. These drives cost a little over $100 with a five-year warranty. I figured, for redundancy, I’d copy my main C-drive data files to both drives, just in case one dies.
Sure enough, six months later, I get the Windows XP error message “USB Device Not Recognized: one of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it”.
I’m a technician. I know how to diagnose whether it really did fail or was something else. For example, I switched ports, shuffled devices, and tried it on other machines. The USB drive no longer works and it’s not the computer. I cannot access the disk and I no longer get a drive letter. I neither let the drive over heat nor did I bump it while it was running. It just failed.
Here’s where it becomes interesting. It’s terribly easy for me to return this drive. I just go online, fill out a form, attach it to the containing box, and mail it off for $5. The manufacturer will return a new drive with no questions asked. I have done this before. BUT, I noticed on the back of the drive that it was manufactured in China.
Now I have to ask my suspicious self these questions:
(1) What if only the internal USB port (not the actual drive) has burned out? Then the drive would still be perfectly intact, but useless to me. If I return it (so easily done and encouraged to do) then is my drive shipped back to Communist China?
(2) Could China have an army of thousands of PRC engineers that merely pop these returned drives out of the USB container, plug them into a Borg-like array of SATA and IDE ports that automatically start downloading the files building a huge secret database that is cross referenced with the people and companies that returned it? They have an address and company name for sure. They will definitely have all sorts of data on the drives.
(3) What if the USB devices are engineered to stochastically burn out first; before the actual internal drive? Would this be a method for China to get Americans to ship their data back to them completely intact after six months of stuffing data on them? I know that without the USB port working, I cannot cryptographically wipe the disk before I send it back. If I open the case to bypass the USB port and access the “still working” drive directly, then the warranty becomes invalid.
This is why I RAID stripe my external disks (or encrypt them) so that when I return any one disk, no complete information is on them. But how many people bother? I know lots of people that just return them with a grimace on their face.
> Can’t be done unless you work at a scrap yard and attach
> it to a magnetic car hoist.
:)
Here’s a commercially available bulk eraser/degausser.
http://www.magnetechcorp.com/Hard_drive_eraser.htm
Very pricey, though.
Better to just swallow the cost of a new drive, and use the old one for target practice.
I sincerely doubt it.
While made in China, the drives are purchased and distributed by companies in the US. Even if you send it back to “the manufacturer”, it’s not going to China but rather some tech shop here in the states. If the drive itself is bad, they’ll junk it, not send it overseas for repairs.
Anyone with sensitive data, in most government and/or military uses, also works under a policy that once a drive is used, it cannot ever leave chain of custody. If a drive fails, it is replaced, not repaired, and the original drive is destroyed. (Hence why drives should be in a proper RAID configuration, preferably with hot-swap drives for any type of production system.)
Now, that’s not to say that some unscrupulous tech won’t pull your personal data off of a drive sent in for repairs. But that tech doesn’t have to be working for the PRC to be doing that...
That's where I was going. A standard magnet(even super strong ones), or even bulk VHS tape erasers simply don't have enough to erase a hard drive.
How do you “RAID” external USB drives?
Oh she’d just SHOOT me! I probably wouldn’t even see it coming. :-)
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