Tech Relics: Now integrating PIII processors for the wank factor.

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Powered Descent: Jul 13, 2008; We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.

Gromit posted:

Not even with million-dollar equipment.

The thing to remember is that SSDs and flash storage are a completely different ball of wax than magnetic media when it comes to secure deletion. SSDs do a ton of load balancing and wear-leveling behind the scenes, all on their own, invisible to the rest of the system. So when you "overwrite" a file, you may or may not be writing the new data to the same flash blocks as the old. In addition, every now and then a block will get marked as bad (again, invisibly to the operating system) and one of the spare blocks the drive has for just this purpose will be activated to replace it. As for the bad block, usually it's simply marked as "never touch this one again" and left there forever. Any data it happens to contain might possibly be recovered at a future date.

Now, it's my understanding that removing the abstraction layer and getting at the leftover data on the raw blocks is not exactly a simple process. Joe the IT guy will have neither the tools nor the expertise to do it. But a data recovery place probably will, and nation-state actors definitely will, if that's who you're worried about. So in these solid-state days, "secure deletion" of a device usually means physically destroying it. Or better yet: everything is encrypted in the first place and nothing is ever written to the drive in the clear. When retiring the device, just destroy the encryption keys and the data is as good as gone.

# ? Nov 28, 2017 20:08

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# ? May 21, 2024 02:39

Sweevo: Nov 8, 2007; i sometimes throw cables away

i mean straight into the bin without spending 10+ years in the box of might-come-in-handy-someday first

im a fucking monster

evobatman posted:

There are people out there claiming that bits in a harddrive can be something other than 0 or 1. Apparently there is a state between the 0 and the 1 that can contain information about what bit was there up to 35 generations ago.

If this were true, the consequence would be that you wouldn't have a 1 terabyte harddrive. you could use these between states to read and write data, and have a 35 terabyte harddrive.

Once a bit is written over, it's written over. It's either 1 or 0, there is no memory of what was there before.

My understanding is that hard drives haven't stored single 1s and 0s on the disk for years. The disk surface is an analogue medium that contains a value that encodes multiple bits into a single spot. Also the density and speeds required for modern drives means that bits aren't stored in a single location, but are sort of smeared out over multiple spots and then combined into the actual results using insane voodoo. So the value actually written to the disk depends not only on the value you want to store, but also on the values of neighbouring data.

Sweevo has a new favorite as of 22:09 on Nov 28, 2017

# ? Nov 28, 2017 20:55

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

What actually transpires beneath the veil of a hard disk drive? Decent people shouldn�t think too much about that.

# ? Nov 28, 2017 21:34

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

Powered Descent posted:

The thing to remember is that SSDs and flash storage are a completely different ball of wax than magnetic media when it comes to secure deletion.

I was responding to the comment about recovering data that has been overwritten. If you are suggesting that when the on-board controller of an SSD writes data over the existing content of a particular cell, that you can get back the data that used to be there then I'm really interested in reading your source. I'm not talking about some system that makes you think something has happened when it hasn't. If you think your hard drive has overwritten data when it actually hasn't I don't think anyone is arguing that you can't get that back.

quote:

Now, it's my understanding that removing the abstraction layer and getting at the leftover data on the raw blocks is not exactly a simple process.

Yeah, you're not kidding. Right behind me is a fume cabinet with a microscope and soldering station that is used to pull chips off boards (mostly phones) to dump their contents, and I'm glad I haven't been trained to use it so I can hand those jobs off to someone else. Dumping chips is easy, but actually decoding the contents, given the proprietary nature of each manufacturer's encoding and encryption schemes, is a nightmare. As well as putting that data in useful order.

Sweevo posted:

My understanding is that hard drives haven't stored single 1s and 0s on the disk for years.

You're right - they never have. 0s or 1s are encoded as a particular pattern of magnetic field changes, and these are often proprietary to each manufacturer. So when you get that disk platter in your spin stand tester or electron microscope, you've no idea what the hell you are looking at until you reverse engineer their system. It's a shitshow from start to finish.

Gromit has a new favorite as of 00:54 on Nov 29, 2017

# ? Nov 29, 2017 00:51

DrankSinatra: Aug 25, 2011

Gromit posted:

I was responding to the comment about recovering data that has been overwritten. If you are suggesting that when the on-board controller of an SSD writes data over the existing content of a particular cell, that you can get back the data that used to be there then I'm really interested in reading your source. I'm not talking about some system that makes you think something has happened when it hasn't. If you think your hard drive has overwritten data when it actually hasn't I don't think anyone is arguing that you can't get that back.

I think what they were saying is that it's hard to guarantee the flash controller will do what you want. Since most consumer flash controllers essentially implement a log structured file system-style layout, it's hard to guarantee that a specific erase block was wiped. The locations given in logical write requests are completely decoupled from the actual physical location of the write, unlike rotational media.

AFAIK, the TRIM command may give you what you want in some capacity, but consumer-grade flash controllers can be janky in how they implement stuff internally.

If any of this even matters, though, it only matters if you've pissed off someone with a lot of resources.

DrankSinatra has a new favorite as of 01:29 on Nov 29, 2017

# ? Nov 29, 2017 01:23

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

DrankSinatra posted:

I think what they were saying is that it's hard to guarantee the flash controller will do what you want. Since most consumer flash controllers essentially implement a log structured file system-style layout, it's hard to guarantee that a specific erase block was wiped. The locations given in logical write requests are completely decoupled from the actual physical location of the write, unlike rotational media.

That's definitely the case, yes, but I was trying to work out why it was directed at me specifically.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 01:26

DrankSinatra: Aug 25, 2011

Gromit posted:

That's definitely the case, yes, but I was trying to work out why it was directed at me specifically.

Ah, gotcha. Sorry!

# ? Nov 29, 2017 01:29

Powered Descent: Jul 13, 2008; We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.

Gromit posted:

I was responding to the comment about recovering data that has been overwritten. If you are suggesting that when the on-board controller of an SSD writes data over the existing content of a particular cell, that you can get back the data that used to be there then I'm really interested in reading your source. I'm not talking about some system that makes you think something has happened when it hasn't. If you think your hard drive has overwritten data when it actually hasn't I don't think anyone is arguing that you can't get that back.

DrankSinatra made my point a lot more clearly than I did:

DrankSinatra posted:

I think what they were saying is that it's hard to guarantee the flash controller will do what you want. Since most consumer flash controllers essentially implement a log structured file system-style layout, it's hard to guarantee that a specific erase block was wiped. The locations given in logical write requests are completely decoupled from the actual physical location of the write, unlike rotational media.

So anyway,

Gromit posted:

That's definitely the case, yes, but I was trying to work out why it was directed at me specifically.

Just pointing out that with SSDs, you have a lot less idea what it's doing behind the scenes and it may well be possible to recover data you thought was overwritten (but actually wasn't), with equipment costing well under a million.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 03:37

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

Powered Descent posted:

Just pointing out that with SSDs, you have a lot less idea what it's doing behind the scenes and it may well be possible to recover data you thought was overwritten (but actually wasn't), with equipment costing well under a million.

But "it may well be possible to recover data you thought was overwritten (but actually wasn't)" is the same whether it's an SSD or an HDD. No poo poo you can recover data that hasn't been overwritten.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 06:37

Pitch: Jun 16, 2005; しらんけど

Gromit posted:

You're right - they never have. 0s or 1s are encoded as a particular pattern of magnetic field changes, and these are often proprietary to each manufacturer. So when you get that disk platter in your spin stand tester or electron microscope, you've no idea what the hell you are looking at until you reverse engineer their system. It's a shitshow from start to finish.

I don't know anything about data recovery but I have a little experience with ferrous metal in an electron microscope: how do you even work with a hard drive platter in that environment, since it's basically nothing but electromagnetic fields?

# ? Nov 29, 2017 07:16

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

I know less than anyone, but assuming a really nice lab and lotsa money, and that you'd already researched or stolen or subpoenaed how the manufacturer reads data, I guess you'd construct a more sensitive hard drive reader arm thing and then transplant and read the platters at a higher level of detail, and then have computers crunch on the image to see if anything could be found?

# ? Nov 29, 2017 07:32

Winty: Sep 22, 2007

http://www.chrisfenton.com/cray-1-digital-archeology/
This guy is trying to build a fully functional Cray-1A replica, but unfortunately he couldn't find any surviving software to run on it. Finally a former Cray employee agreed to loan him an actual physical disk pack!
Of course the ancient disk drives he gets to read them are hosed beyond repair. So he builds his own rig to position the drive head extra slowly, while sampling the voltage directly from the drive's own read head, which still works.
He's then left with a massive raw "magnetic image" of the platters, and another hacker is able to reverse engineer the bit/track/sector formatting and finally come up with a disk image.
Pretty freaking cool!

# ? Nov 29, 2017 08:39

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

/\ Exceptionally cool! /\

Pitch posted:

I don't know anything about data recovery but I have a little experience with ferrous metal in an electron microscope: how do you even work with a hard drive platter in that environment, since it's basically nothing but electromagnetic fields?

Yeah, I meant a magnetic force microscope. That side of things is not my area of expertise so it's easy for me to get that stuff mixed up, sorry.

e: Having said that, I did come across this quote:

quote:

Lorentz microscopy uses an electron beam that is fired at the drive platter. Magnetic fields produce an effect known as the Lorentz force. This force deflects the electron beam. These deflections can be measured using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The SEM will then return the deflection pattern which can be used to "map" the encoded drive image. More recently, Transmission Electron Microscopes (TEM) have been used for this process. This is a slow process that is economically infeasible for use on most modern hard drives.

[https://digital-forensics.sans.org/blog/2009/01/28/spin-stand-microscopy-of-hard-disk-data]

Gromit has a new favorite as of 09:48 on Nov 29, 2017

# ? Nov 29, 2017 09:45

LifeSunDeath: Jan 4, 2007; still gay rights and smoke weed every day

Walk down memory lane with some old radio shack circulars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rDlHKKcMFI&t=1302s

# ? Nov 30, 2017 05:22

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

I used to absolutely pore over the Radio Shack catalog as a kid, though I could only afford the cheap junk. I still have my SPEEDWAY handheld game. It was about the right size, so I'd hold it in my hand and pretend it was a tricorder as it went *tic* *tic* *bleep*.

My god though, $899 for a camcorder. Really wouldn't mind a little Flavoradio, even if it were AM only, and my god the stations on AM are horrifying these days.

# ? Nov 30, 2017 08:31

JnnyThndrs: May 29, 2001; HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

Winty posted:

http://www.chrisfenton.com/cray-1-digital-archeology/
This guy is trying to build a fully functional Cray-1A replica, but unfortunately he couldn't find any surviving software to run on it. Finally a former Cray employee agreed to loan him an actual physical disk pack!
Of course the ancient disk drives he gets to read them are hosed beyond repair. So he builds his own rig to position the drive head extra slowly, while sampling the voltage directly from the drive's own read head, which still works.
He's then left with a massive raw "magnetic image" of the platters, and another hacker is able to reverse engineer the bit/track/sector formatting and finally come up with a disk image.
Pretty freaking cool!

That is loving amazing, in several different ways.

The most thought-provoking concept that I took away from it is that so much data is gone and we don't even yet realize we've lost it.

Those HD's were from 1975. My father built ultra-precision semiconductor and disk- manufacturing tooling for IBM's version of these drives in the early Seventies, I remember him showing me disk-drive bracketry and floating-head parts when I was a little kid. I remember seeing poo poo like these drives lying around at Halted Specialties in Santa Clara in the mid-Eighties, and Weird Stuff a little later than that.

My point is this: this isn't that long ago. I'm 50 and my dad is still building machine tooling as a hobby in his retirement, we're still here and relatively cognizant, and the ability to read any of this stuff is toast; the only reason this guy got so much help is that he's dealing with Cray equipment, which was the golden child halo company for so many years. If he was trying to read something more prosaic, he'd be screwed.

Even poo poo as unstable as nitrocellulose film holds up better in terms of restoration than computer data; all the people who were terrified of 'computers knowing everything about us forever' were only half-right, you can just wait those evil electronic bastards out.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 04:06

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

There's this Christopher Priest book I haven't read yet, but it's about a city built on top of railroad tracks and there's this whole industry (I assume) of people running ahead and building new track while another dismantles the one behind it. I dunno what it's all supposed to be about as I haven't read it, but it feels like we're in that city sometimes, so busy building the present and near future that even the recent past is disintegrating faster than we can archive it... in formats that haven't passed any test of time.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 05:07

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Holy poo poo Halted

# ? Dec 1, 2017 05:52

Cat Hassler: Feb 7, 2006; Slippery Tilde

We had a Radio Shack in my small town's mall. Right next to the Orange Julius

I would go in and look at the games they had on cassette for the TRS 80.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 08:28

Casimir Radon: Aug 2, 2008

I'm hoping LGR has some good Christmas games lined up this month. I don't think any of those videos has ever felt like a let down.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 08:58

Queen_Combat: Jan 15, 2011

Recirculating Acoustic Memory?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BIx2x-Q2fE

Uses the speed of sound in a piano wire to store bits.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 13:40

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

JnnyThndrs posted:

The most thought-provoking concept that I took away from it is that so much data is gone and we don't even yet realize we've lost it.

There's been rumblings that we're currently in a "digital dark age," due to that, because it's only going to get worse. I mean when was the last time you held an actual photograph that was less than 10 years old? How about a physical map? A reference book?

The fact is we're using all of these things through electronic devices today, and we're storing all these things in digital media which fails quite frequently, and large portions of knowledge could easily be lost with no physical backup.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 14:00

Carth Dookie: Jan 28, 2013

We must carve out memes onto granite tablets to preserve our culture for future generations. We must ensure the people of the future are able to contemplate the nature of Slenderman and important questions like "do you have stairs in your house?" How can the people of tomorrow understand our relationships with each other if the story of the printer hauler is lost to time? What of loss.jpg?

# ? Dec 1, 2017 14:20

Randaconda: Jul 3, 2014; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Carth Dookie posted:

We must carve out memes onto granite tablets to preserve our culture for future generations. We must ensure the people of the future are able to contemplate the nature of Slenderman and important questions like "do you have stairs in your house?" How can the people of tomorrow understand our relationships with each other if the story of the printer hauler is lost to time? What of loss.jpg?

now accepting donations for the goatse monument.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 14:33

The Sausages: Sep 30, 2012; What do you want to do? Who do you want to be?

Metal Geir Skogul posted:

Recirculating Acoustic Memory?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BIx2x-Q2fE

Uses the speed of sound in a piano wire to store bits.

I enjoyed that, love the guy's enthusiasm, reminds me of one of my high school math & science teachers.

I'd heard of delay line memory but never seen it implemented like this.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 14:44

Iron Crowned: May 6, 2003; by Hand Knit

Randaconda posted:

now accepting donations for the goatse monument.

Consider that your grand kids may not know the joy of staring into a gaping anus

# ? Dec 1, 2017 14:48

F4rt5: May 20, 2006

The Sausages posted:

I enjoyed that, love the guy's enthusiasm, reminds me of one of my high school math & science teachers.

I'd heard of delay line memory but never seen it implemented like this.

You should see how he runs his Klein bottle webshop :v:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU

# ? Dec 1, 2017 14:51

stuffed crust punk: Oct 8, 2004; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Iron Crowned posted:

There's been rumblings that we're currently in a "digital dark age," due to that, because it's only going to get worse. I mean when was the last time you held an actual photograph that was less than 10 years old? How about a physical map? A reference book?

The fact is we're using all of these things through electronic devices today, and we're storing all these things in digital media which fails quite frequently, and large portions of knowledge could easily be lost with no physical backup.

The good side of this is a photo album full of photos has become a cheap and easy gift that gets a lot more thoughtfulness credit than it deserves

# ? Dec 1, 2017 14:53

Antioch: Apr 18, 2003

The Sausages posted:

I enjoyed that, love the guy's enthusiasm, reminds me of one of my high school math & science teachers.

I'd heard of delay line memory but never seen it implemented like this.

Cliff Stoll is one of the world's greatest living humans. I love his energy and enthusiasm. He's the living definition of eccentric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk

# ? Dec 1, 2017 17:11

ExplodingSims: Aug 17, 2010; RAGDOLL
FLIPPIN IN A MOVIE
HOT DAMN
THINK I MADE A POOPIE

Carth Dookie posted:

We must carve out memes onto granite tablets to preserve our culture for future generations. We must ensure the people of the future are able to contemplate the nature of Slenderman and important questions like "do you have stairs in your house?" How can the people of tomorrow understand our relationships with each other if the story of the printer hauler is lost to time? What of loss.jpg?

Loss.jpg is eternal, and when all else has fallen away and the sun turns dim, loss will still be there.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 18:14

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

ExplodingSims posted:

Loss.jpg is eternal, and when all else has fallen away and the sun turns dim, loss will still be there.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 18:58

GutBomb: Jun 15, 2005; Dude?

KozmoNaut posted:

This is the best post I've ever seen

Holy poo poo

# ? Dec 1, 2017 19:15

tater_salad: Sep 15, 2007

I like it.

# ? Dec 1, 2017 19:30

The Kins: Oct 2, 2004

Learned about this today:

It was supposedly part of a promo by Borders (remember them?) that included that CD and a bag of Win98 branded coffee. Here's a Youtube Playlist of the songs on it.

# ? Dec 3, 2017 04:42