Tuesday 23 October 2012

Bonfire of the Hard Drives

I've had a busy weekend getting some important jobs done and some model work completed. I'm afraid I didn't take any photo's so you'll just have to take my word for it. I've also been away and back again on company business so all told its been a very busy few days and I'm feeling pretty done in. And its only Tuesday!!

On Saturday, with the help of my youngest daughter, I built some of the 4Ground MDF buildings I purchased at SELWG. These were two sets of shops and a terrace of three houses. I now have quite a collection of these, more than enough to represent a small village or the edge of a larger town on the games table. The young Padawan enjoyed helping and took great pleasure in correcting me when I read the instructions wrong! 

I also painted my first set of 6mm tanks (three Tiger I's) although I don't consider them finished yet as I have yet to base them. I'm still waiting for the flat edged MDF bases I ordered from warbases.com to arrive. I only ordered them Friday and expect delivery in a day or two. Once I have these I'll do a few experiments to work out the style of the base dressing I want to use for my new armies. I want to keep things simple but also consistent so I need to settle on a particular style before I start painting and basing in earnest. 

The other big job I have been doing this weekend is destroying old computers! I have three defunct and non-functional PC's (two laptops and an ancient desktop) that have been sitting around for ages. I have managed to restore one of the laptops to working order for my youngest daughter to play with. The other laptop and desktop however were beyond hope so I stripped out their Hard drives.

The computers will be sent for recycling but the hard drives are staying with me, for a few weeks at least. Formatting isn't a cast iron guarantee of erasing all data from a hard drive so I have elected to use the best 'free' wiping technique I know. Total destruction in the heart of a November 5th Bonfire. I'm not sure what old Guy Fawkes would have made of this!

8 comments:

  1. Burning em will certainly completely destroy them but there´s gold im them thar bits!!! :-D
    Cheers
    paul

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  2. hammer or free software such as killdisk will do the job.

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  3. That should do the job; you hear so many horror stories of how hard drives end up in the wrong hands.

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  4. Didn't take you long to get a lick of paint on them tanks did it??

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  5. You just can't beat the analogue approach of physically destroying all the porn, er, I mean data, yeah data, you have on those drives.

    Have have fun, PyroBoy!

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  6. Well we can be pretty sure Mr. Fawkes wouldn't say "Got that environmental impact statement ready?" ;)

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  7. The Luddite in me finds something strangely beautiful in those there flames.

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  8. How long do hard drives keep information after being taken out? I have two hard drives, that were taken out yrs ago. How can I upload the info from them?

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