Well I don’t keep sensitive data such as passwords on the drives. As for this drive, did you ever think this came from a stolen computer? The other individual could have gleaned all of this info and then dumped the drive. It’s in your hands now, you showcased it on your channel and now you could be considered the criminal who may have stolen the computer this drive was in. In cases like this, wipe the drive before showcasing it. It will keep you safer from some gestapo style police force who will blame the first person who found the drive. It would be an innocent person in jail for someone else’s crime.
@ well it’s a good thing a have a ton of footage, documenting how I found this thing lol. Also, if they do nail me for this, it’s going to make for an interesting series of videos 😂 no but fr I don’t think you have to worry about that. Also, of course I’ll wipe the drive. I’ll probably use it for one of my retro projects.
Yeah, that's the point, they call it "something-baiting", something like that. Where they try to make out a video full of big fat nothing is something exciting, but actually, it isn't. This is "terrifying" like a cordless drill is terrifying when you *don't* use it in any sorts of masscres.
Man the title had me sweating because some other guy made a video about a hp z mini pc thing with lots of ILLEGAL stuff on it, however this is also horrible, for the previous owner at least, so glad there are still people who actually care, unlike the person who threw the drive before wiping it fully.
I have this obsession with having the startmenu/taskbar on my left side of the screen. Unless I use extra apps in Windows 11 I can't do that. Which is stupid. Windows 11 is just Windows 10 with a different theme and a bit more "locked down". I have found no good reason to upgrade to Windows 11.
Oh my goodness, this was literally an eye opening PSA, if there ever was one! Thank goodness this hard drive inadvertently landed in the hands of someone genuine and trustworthy- a blessing for the original owner of that hard drive. You've definitely had some INSANE experiences with computer stuff lately!!! 😱
@@thethriftyfawn Man I don’t even know what to say. I was stumped, I’m still shaky just thinking about it. And who knows how many people just carelessly throw these things out without even thinking about what could happen. Yikes.
@@schvabek There are some statistics about it, MIT has found that 78% of "wiped" harddrives still have data and I would say from just personal experiences that 50% (thats a like nice estimate, real estimates are 30%) of discarded harddrives weren't wiped Luckily my dad works with computers as a job so when I was a kid he came home with like a stack of hard drives and essentially said "wanna smash em?"
@@zapx1239 I bet that statistic isn’t too far off. SSD’s are a bit safer (given the way the data is stored on them), but yeah, HDD’s… if it’s something crucial, just smash em.
He probably didnt realise that the drive was recoverable, probably throw it away thinking the drive was dead, bit odd finding windows 11 on spinning rust, probably upgraded to ssd or m.2.
About why it wouldn't boot on the original computer, if I had to guess, it's simply because it's old, so it's still using the old-school BIOS / MBR booting process, while Windows 11 requires an UEFI / GPT system. Even if it wasn't the case, Windows 11 isn't actually compatible with Core 2 anymore, like, at all, it doesn't even boot because it requires CPU instructions that first appeared in Core i 2nd generation (don't quote me on the exact generation). Also, ladies and gentlemen, that is why Microsoft now forces BitLocker on new installation of Windows, just like Apple uses their T2 chip to encrypt, so people can't leak their ENTIRE LIFE because they couldn't be bothered to format or destroy a drive (not that a regular format is secure, but at least, it's SOMETHING).
@@MrCed122 yeah, that figures. Like I said, I’m not familiar with windows 11 at all lol. And yeah, wiping you HDD usually still isn’t enough, but it’s a far cry better than this.
@@thewindows11fanBut if the drive uses the GPT partition format like the overwhelming majority of Windows 11 installs do then a Windows XP era PC wont be able to recognize it as bootable since it can't understand GPT only MBR.
I remember sending a cruddy gaming laptop I bought off Walmart to their warranty service and literally had a similar experience with the hard drive _they themselves_ installed in place of the failed one that my system had.
I work in IT & do repairs etc; that metal case with the plastic sled & metal mounting pins is from a Dell- It would fit perfectly in one of the Dell Dimension 5100 series. However the partitions are without a doubt cloned from an ASUS- they are the only major company that puts windows on the 1st Partition, the user data (set by changing the system variables) gets routed to Partition 2, & is always named DATA. Partition 3 is always a hidden partition to be booted from either the ASUS Recovery partition when enabled, or accessed through the ASUS system portal. It can easily be enabled through Ranish, GParted or many other Linux / 3rd Party Windows tools. In my line of work it is required by law (in 43 states) that I attempt to contact the individual by email, Phone# & or Federal mail & waiting no less than one month- 28/30/31 days & no less, Prior to me wiping & formatting, re-using or selling the drive, PC or components.
OR pursuant to local law- turn it over to police for a period of 3 months- after which, if the individual cannot be found, it would then legally belong to me, assuming there wasn't some form of incriminating evidence on it that they need to investigate, & retain the drive for evidence.
Hey, thanks a lot for the info. Super fascinating, so glad to hear from someone who actually has a background in this stuff. Anyway, where I live, I don’t think we have to many laws regarding cyber security. Or I’m just completely oblivious.
I bought an old Toshiba laptop a while back, still had it's hard drive in it and yes, when I looked it had all the original owners details on there - he was a doctor of some kind and there were a lot of old health related documents of hundreds of his patients still accessible, plus all his internet history and log ins, and then I checked his pictures directory and it was full of pornography, of course. And it just kept getting worse, there were hundreds of pictures of his wife or girlfriend (you can guess what sort of pictures I'm talking about here) plus weirdly lots of pornographic images of ladies with other ladies heads badly composited into the pictures - and then it became obvious these 'heads' were actually people he knew, there were some pictures of what looked like parties and gatherings and you guessed it, that was the source of the 'heads'. It was pretty disturbing, frankly. I shredded the contents of course. Some people just haven't a clue when it comes to their data and how to dispose of their old hard drives.
Yikes, that’s pretty bad. I’ve found personal files plenty of times, since I mess around with old computers so much, but this (a new installation with passwords and login info) is a first for me
I recognize that hdd caddy, it looks like it definitely came out of a dell optiplex 3020, 7020, or 9020 desktop. Also, coming from someone who’s dug through a recycling center in my town for 2 years, ive seen my whole fare share of data from people who never wipe their hard drives.
Hey, yeah, it is from a dell! Also, yeah, I have a friend who recycles old HW, and yeah, he has A BUNCH of old HDD’s. Curious how many of them have data like this. Crazy.
I'm pretty sure the drive caddy the HDD was in is from a Dell Optiplex OEM desktop! Also, you should definitely contact the owner of the HDD and tell them to protect their data/wipe old drives, etc
I like to take hard drives apart when they stop working, the strong magnets are really good for holding key chains. after I am done with them no data can be recovered, I hope...
this is a really good example of why you should always overwrite a drive when your getting rid of it. formatting can still be recovered, overwriting or zeroing it out is a much cleaner option
When I dumped my Precision Workstations in California last month... I used a Drill Press to destroy the Drives. I can buy replacement Workstations in the Philippines for next to nothing.
The First PC couldnt boot due to Windows using UEFI instead of The Legacy/Bios that motherboard understood, you can tell because the drive will have an EFI partition. Great Video with a very hooking title and thumbnail! Keep it up mate!
This is just straight up terrifying and seriously dangerous. Before you dump anything storage whether HDD SSD SD card flash drive Always make sure it truely dead by wiping it or break it physically. He just straight out lucky here that this man didn't do anything.
SSD drives require dedicated software from their manufacturers that will do a complete safe erasure of all data that would lead to an unrecoverable state. SSD's do have finite read write cycles and using an unapproved method of wiping the drive could lead to rendering the drive useless.
If your getting rid of a Drive always open it up and take the platters out, along with the 2 strong magnets. You only need a torx screwdriver set to do this and it only takes like 5 minutes. You can fully erase the platters with the magnets if you want, but once there out from their control board they are not getting data off it without a very specialized tools and weeks of recovery time and none at all if you ran the magnets over the platters. You also end up with a neat collection of shiny disks if you don't toss them. I always keep the magnets and platters tossing the controlboard\motor. The magnets are super strong so becareful with them.
I have had hard drives come to me still ready to go with a complete set of documents, still signed into Google Chrome with all the logins saved, and I chuck them into a machine as second disk, format and the data wipe them. People don't often realise the dangers they put them selves in. He probably didn't know because the disk didn't boot any more and he considered it broken, so essentially for him it was job done. Sad isn't it?!?
I think the reason the old computer wouldn't boot from the hard drive is because it doesn't support UEFI. Windows 11 requires UEFI, and will not boot on a system that only supports BIOS or is configured to use Legacy boot.
I usually run the "clean all" command in diskpart before selling or getting rid of an HDD. It essentially sets all the blocks to 0. DBAN is also a great program to completely wipe hard drives.
With both virtualbox and vmware, you can point a VM to a physical disk and use that as a boot device. Sometimes the disk device permissions can be a bit fiddly, but it's easier than going through the storage locker.
you can access the same way with 2 factor authentication because it would be like opening chrome on your own computer, it won't ask for the password every time you open it
I never would have expected this to have a standard Win11 install on it given that crazy caddy/mount it was in. I figured for sure it’d have been part of some RAID setup or something.
I also found an old imac with the entire life of a woman. Email pictures of her and her girlfiend, downloaded movies and mucic. The mac wasn't even password protected. Luckily for her I found that and wiped everything.
As I’ve said in some previous comments, it’s super common for me to find that stuff, since I go through many old computers. But most of them are pre-internet/social media era, and I kinda don’t blame those people for not wiping the HDD, since they really had no concept of their data being leaked “out there”. But this, holy crap. Pretty insane.
I was in your situation less than a week ago, found an entire PC. Motherboard turned out to be dead, everything else is functional. I don't bother booting up drives and looking around. I Connect them to a burner PC with no internet access. -> Open Hard Disk Sentinel -> Reinitialize disk surface (Formats the drive and addresses weak sectors if present) -> Wait. That's it.
The reason it would not boot is that all DELL Optiplex are shipped with RAID configured in the BIOS, which is crazy, and why they do that is beyond me, all regular comPuters are set to AHCI.
10:13 It might still be fairly old, even with Win11 installed. Windows has been upgradable at no additional cost since at least 7, maybe even Vista (my own PC is running Win10 on my original Win7 license, and the only reason it's not on 11 is that its 4th gen Intel is a couple of generations too old). So, even disregarding the possibility that it was an older drive recycled into a new PC, it might have been in use in the same PC since as far back as 2015.
Interestingly enough, I watched your video on the ASUS computer you found in the trash and was wondering if I’d ever find a computer in my apartment’s dumpster. Lo and behold, one day I saw a keyboard sticking out of the top and when I looked in I saw an old Dell Optiplex all in one! When I plugged it in it booted into the original owner’s account with no password. It was incredibly slow and filled with viruses from a kid trying to download cracked games and roblox hacks on a family PC. It was also filled with sensitive info like tax returns and resumes. It hadn’t been used in a year so their accounts were signed out luckily. I ended up reinstalling Windows and it works great, but could use an SSD upgrade. It’s not fast but it handles UA-cam well and the display looks great. I’m glad I found it before the info could get into the wrong hands.
@@Evan420 Hey, that’s awesome! So glad you were able to get it working. And when going through old computers I CONSTANTLY find unprotected accounts and personal files, but this was different. Like, this was a new installation, and the stuff on there was out of this world.
At my old job, we always drilled holes in old hard drives because the company had no budget to send them to a recycler. I always make sure to encrypt all of my drives just in case.
dumb and dangerous to do that, they can be took apart with a few torx screw drivers in less then 5min, and the platters separated from the chassis, you can then take the 2 powerful magnets that are inside them and apply them to the metal platters fully erasing them if your really paranoid.
It look very much like the caddy for HDD and ODD from a Dell Optiplex system. I would send an email from and to his address telling him you found the drive with all his data intact and advise him to not throw away any other drive in the future without wiping it clean or physically destroy it.
I used to live in an apartment complex and had another tenant throw away a whole system irresponsibly. The system still booted and had a lot of family pictures on it as well as tax information and social security numbers. Fortunately for them I don't steal identities, I wiped the drive and used it for other things.
About 6-7 months ago, I bought an ssd from a person on the internet, when I plugged it in my pc to use it, it had windows installed on it, and it booted right away, it not only had the previous owner programs and such, but all of their accounts were still logged in, I could see everything, and the worst part, THEIR BANK ACCOUNT WAS LOGGED IN TOO, I could easily wipe the account clean if I wanted, but instead i contacted them and warned about it, and of course I wiped the drive, still use the ssd as my boot drive If you're going to dispose or sell a hdd or ssd, WIPE THE DRIVE PLEASE
That’s very nice of you to do. Of course I’ll wipe the drive, but I’m not giving it to anyone, I’ll likely just use it for one of my projects or something.
BSPlayer ... now that's a program I haven't seen in almost 20 years. Dumpster diving often pays off - I actually found an Amiga 3000 once - back when they were already worth ~600€. Of course fully working with *very* light battery damage. Sadly the HDD died after 3-4 days.
People upgrade and they dont bother wiping the drives, this happens all the time, My terrifying realisation of this was getting a free HP Proliant DL360 that was the SQL database for a sensitive organization containing hundreds of gigabytes of personal and employee records.
This reminds me of when I discovered two old desktops just placed against the wall in one of the buildings at my university. I took a closer look, saw that they were made to run Windows XP, and contemplated taking out the hard drives to see if I could find some old software on them, but the hard drives had been removed. Which, considering that there could've been people like me, but with nefarious intentions happening to appear there, was probably for the best.
I had a couple of drives that were stored for a time and refused to spin up so I took a sledge to them. They are surprisingly tough so I took them apart and made sure the platters were ruined before throwing them away
i once found a retro hard drive in an abandoned pc and when i plugged it in it worked, it was unwiped. you know the saying "curiosity killed the cat"? well i checked the documents folder and i saw pornography.
Yeah, that can happen. Hopefully it wasn’t child porn or something horrible. But yeah, if you’re not ready to see that stuff, you’re just better off not going through old hard drives.
I once bought a bunch of SSD's from an e-waste recycler on ebay to build a RAID 0 array. Every single one of them had a windows installation with personal information.
I would just wipe the data. There is no telling the circumstances surrounding how the drive ended up in the dumpster. IMHO It's not worth risking retaliation if your unsolicited steps in educating that individual doesn't go your way. Good deeds rarely go unpunished.
I would call the guy's cell phone, tell him exactly what happened, and how lucky he is that someone not nefarious got a hold of the drive and what he should do. Because I have a moral standing due to my faith in Jesus Christ, I would help the guy protect his online data. (I am a little tech savvy myself. BTW, love the content).
Hi, i also bought a iPhone Xr today from the flea and it was turned off, it was icloud locked so i bought for spare parts, but when i turned it on it didn’t have a password and it had lots of photos, google accounts, bank accounts; contacts; spotify/netflix;betting app accounts and much more, also had his I.D. and stuff decided it was best log out of his icloud ( he had the password saved and i entered it) then i reseted the phone. I can’t imagine what whould of happened if it got into the wrong hands
Makes me wonder if the original owner of the hard drive and NBC died. Then someone (landlord perhaps) who wasn't too tech savvy, just tossed it. The caddy the HDD was in made me think it was going to be installed in a NAS. Once there the NAS would format and overwrite it. So wiping the drive wasn't necessary.
I typically never look that far in. I've been building PC's for 25 years, people will just give you so many things. A surprising number of laptops, when they don't turn on and I can't get it to fire up easily, they don't want to order a board 90% of the time. They also know it is safe with me, and if it gets recycled, it will be wiped. A most important lesson! Don't just toss your HDD in some random trash, properly dispose of it.
I know man, I just couldn’t believe someone would do that, and I thought perhaps all the passwords/login info had expired, and I wouldn’t be able to log in. But nope.
@@schvabek The other thing I was thinking, was if they needed to dispose of the OS, for the GPS data or some type of footprint that leads back to some unsavory things. Criminal dumps the evidence without dumping the entire machine. Which is harder to do with a laptop also, especially if you're in a hurry.
@@schvabek Yeah, odds are it's not anything that serious, especially with how everything was not suspicious at all. But you could certainly use it for your next best selling mystery novel! Instead of not much of anything, the first thing you see is Tor Browser, now you're being chased by human traffickers across five countries.
Well, when you see a serial called "Zabranjena ljubav" written in all caps and wrong (f instead of v), you can be pretty sure that's not a bright bulb.
That motherboard doesn't support newer versions of windows because Safe boot and TPM 2.0 Wasn't a Bios Option, However you can create a bootable win 11 USB with Rufus and Bypass all the Hardware checks ;) UEFI AND Legacy Are important too
Some people are very carless with protecting there data. I once found a Hard drive that was from a small business and found an excel worksheet containing all the employees sensitive information like addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers.
i buy hard drives from my local flea market from time to time. Every hard drive i bought had data on it, and in some cases, completely bootable windows installs. I go though the data and if i see music i would like to listen to i copy it. Then the drive gets a low-level format and I chuck it aside for future use.
Hard drives are so inexpensive now-a-days, I would have smashed the throw-away drive with a hammer or better yet, used it for target practice on the shooting range before tossing it in the trash. That person is so lucky that a conscience person like you found it. Kudos!
This is definitely getting into a gray area. If you were showing people the dangers of not wiping their hard drives and throwing them away by using an HDD you own and accounts you own, then I would see no problem with this. Signing into someone else's email or Instagram account without direct and explicit permission from the account owner, regardless if you steal anything or leak any of their information is definitely not something I would do. It is illegal in the US, Canada, Australia, EU, and many many other countries.
Just more evidence that wiping any drive before you discard it is not optional. Even if the drive is unrecoverable, someone with a bit of knowledge can make a clean environment and recover a spinning disk like this to where it can get data pulled off it.
the instant you tried booting from it in the first system and it wouldn't work, my first thought was "that's windows 11, which is most likely UEFI on a GUID partition table, and that doesn't look like a system that boots UEFI". it doesn't look like you quite came around to that conclusion, so I can say I'm 99% sure that's why you couldn't boot it.
That first PC cannot boot Windows 11 because it is hardware-incompatible. The Core 2 Duo platform lacks a UEFI BIOS, and I believe the CPU lacks a particular instruction set, both of which Windows 11 requires.
The old computers BIOS that do not recognize GPT partitions do not know how to boot from it. That is why your old PC did not booted. Also, as a side note, even XP properly booted, would not read the partitions on that HDD. The new UEFI computer managed to boot from the HDD but because there is another hardware (speciffically I think to the SATA controller), Windows failed to load the drivers and BSOD. That is why after repairing (when Windows founded and installed the appropriate set of SATA drivers), it managed to boot and correctly load the OS. Sad that someone can trash his data so easy, many people give no importance to theirs precious data until is too late. Btw, if you move to the 7nt floor, for sure you will have plenty of space :)
Yeah, it’s probably what it was. Hahahaha moving to the seventh floor actually doesn’t sound like a bad option 😂 But no, I’m moving to a house, I’ll make a bunch of videos on that, setting up my new space etc.
Contact him immediately. Maybe it wasn't him who threw away the HDD. Maybe he paid someone to repair his PC. I would even give the HDD to the local data protection officer. (in German: Datenschutzbeauftragter).
And this is why you encrypt the storage on your computers. LUKS on Linux and BitLocker on Windows Pro. Don't have Windows Pro? Then pay the fee to upgraded, then encrypt your data. Yes, you'll need to enter a, hopefully 20-30 character, password, but mitigating the risk is well worth typing a few extra characters at boot. Honestly, Microsoft should do everybody a favor and enable BitLocker on every edition of Windows. :-/ Does Apple have have encryption for Macs?
Apple encryption is pretty tight. Also, wiping the drive with just Disk Utility zeroes the disk. HDDs are quite different in that aspect when compared to SSD’s, just in the way they store the data. They are quite a bit easier to recover data from.
8:20 - maybe your test pc doesn't support uefi boot method. And ye, some solutions - 1: test usb created from rufus in mbr mode (right from this you can and should see bios legacy. Of course just to load uefi based os) (and yes, it maybe won't work on some machines.) 2: ventoy - super useful program, where you can just boot any of os from iso files (maybe include macos, just maybe, if interest - google is your help buddy). And one thing about ventoy - based on grub, so won't work with secure boot turn on. 3: opencore bootloader on usb stick - made for mac, but work on other devices too. (Mac has proprietary uefi unfortunately... But opencore can run other things, as i remember). 4: just another pc, as you show later on the video. Maybe my comment help you) gn or gd!
He probibly could not get the drive to boot up and thought it was useless. I have one perfectly good gaming PC that just shows a black screen after a storm we had. I still have it in a closet. One day I will get it out and see if I can fix it.
the title made me think it had child p*rn or something like that on it.
Yeah, the title is kinda sketchy, but you have to agree this is also pretty bad.
Same lol
Well I don’t keep sensitive data such as passwords on the drives. As for this drive, did you ever think this came from a stolen computer? The other individual could have gleaned all of this info and then dumped the drive. It’s in your hands now, you showcased it on your channel and now you could be considered the criminal who may have stolen the computer this drive was in. In cases like this, wipe the drive before showcasing it. It will keep you safer from some gestapo style police force who will blame the first person who found the drive. It would be an innocent person in jail for someone else’s crime.
@ well it’s a good thing a have a ton of footage, documenting how I found this thing lol. Also, if they do nail me for this, it’s going to make for an interesting series of videos 😂 no but fr I don’t think you have to worry about that. Also, of course I’ll wipe the drive. I’ll probably use it for one of my retro projects.
Yeah, that's the point, they call it "something-baiting", something like that. Where they try to make out a video full of big fat nothing is something exciting, but actually, it isn't. This is "terrifying" like a cordless drill is terrifying when you *don't* use it in any sorts of masscres.
i think they upgraded to an ssd and cloned the system but forgot to wipe the old hdd
I don’t know man. Just, don’t know 😂
Yea, i had the same thought too
Yeah, I'm sure you're right. Pretty dumb not wiping the drive before tossing it.
@@Cyba_ITPeople sell computers, smartphones, consoles etc all the time without wiping them or even logging out of online accounts.
Probably, if not, it doesn't make any sense.
Glad people like you exist who are still making calm tech videos, nowadays everything is too intense and overedited.
Love your videos man
Thanks so much. Love you man ❤️
YESSSS and so many of them try to pretend to be "calm" when its still an overedited mess just with a soft voice
@ I also feel that way, and I’m glad my audience appreciates the way I make my videos ❤️
That or making video about computer related topic that the youtuber has no idea about it.
You joined UA-cam one week ago?
Gmail is the gold mine for data. You could change his password for banks or whatever and steal his identity. This is nuts!
I’m still stumped. Can’t help but wondering how many of these unprotected HDDs are out there
nuh, banks have 2fa forced, since the stone age. but lots of other online accounts don't.
@@giornikitop5373 2FA - send a code to the email account. And then I'm in and emptying the account.
Man the title had me sweating because some other guy made a video about a hp z mini pc thing with lots of ILLEGAL stuff on it, however this is also horrible, for the previous owner at least, so glad there are still people who actually care, unlike the person who threw the drive before wiping it fully.
@@Alexei1727 Yeah, I know the title is a bit clickbaity, but it really is terrifying. Still stumped man.
Do you still remeber the vid title cuz i wana see the vid
tbf there are tools used to sail the sea on there
@@Inteli7_7700k I believe it's "This computer could have gotten me in trouble!! HP Z2 Mini G3!!" by DLM tech garage
No good deed goes unpunished as they say. Just wipe the drive clean.
@@jklax Of course I will. I’ll probably use it in one of my older builds that needs a HDD.
I subscribed at the part where you said "I havent used windows 11 yet"
same bro.
@@HowieDue416 hahahaha thanks 😂 I actually did use I’d a bit at work, but I don’t have it installed on any of my machines.
win11 is trash fr
I have this obsession with having the startmenu/taskbar on my left side of the screen. Unless I use extra apps in Windows 11 I can't do that. Which is stupid. Windows 11 is just Windows 10 with a different theme and a bit more "locked down".
I have found no good reason to upgrade to Windows 11.
There is an 11 now?
@@blackpanther50 where have you been for the last three years? Under a rock?
1:34 that’s not from a server, that’s from a Dell desktop! I recognize those blue hard drive rails, I saw some in an XPS 420 a friend gave me
I’ve seen it in older Dell Inspiron desktop (2nd and 3rd gen Intel) as well
Hey, thanks for the info, yeah, people have informed me of that
It's the drive cage from an Optiplex 3020 SFF.
@@bradbrown6034 Came here to say this. Beat me to it.
Oh my goodness, this was literally an eye opening PSA, if there ever was one! Thank goodness this hard drive inadvertently landed in the hands of someone genuine and trustworthy- a blessing for the original owner of that hard drive.
You've definitely had some INSANE experiences with computer stuff lately!!! 😱
@@thethriftyfawn Man I don’t even know what to say. I was stumped, I’m still shaky just thinking about it. And who knows how many people just carelessly throw these things out without even thinking about what could happen. Yikes.
@schvabek You're doing phenomenal work here bro, for the entire WORLD 🩷
@@schvabek There are some statistics about it, MIT has found that 78% of "wiped" harddrives still have data and I would say from just personal experiences that 50% (thats a like nice estimate, real estimates are 30%) of discarded harddrives weren't wiped
Luckily my dad works with computers as a job so when I was a kid he came home with like a stack of hard drives and essentially said "wanna smash em?"
@@zapx1239 I bet that statistic isn’t too far off. SSD’s are a bit safer (given the way the data is stored on them), but yeah, HDD’s… if it’s something crucial, just smash em.
@@schvabek Yeah it was data from a university, probably containing passwords and similar.
He probably didnt realise that the drive was recoverable, probably throw it away thinking the drive was dead, bit odd finding windows 11 on spinning rust, probably upgraded to ssd or m.2.
Exactly. One of the reasons I made this video. Perhaps it saves someone from getting into serious trouble
In fairness, if I found that somebody had installed Windows 11 on my hardware, I'd probably throw it away.
Real
lol a lot of hate for win 11 in the comments 😂😂 🤟🤟❤️❤️
one of microsofts biggest failures
@@stevemanlp well then I won’t be in a hurry to actually use it on any of my systems
@@schvabek i actually prefer ubuntu over windows 11 even (my pain pc has windows 10 tho)
im happy people like you exist,your a kind person.
Thanks man, that’s very nice of you to say ❤
If I'm dumping a HDD I take it apart, you'd have to know which order to place the platters in order to read it.
Well, if it’s taken apart, chances of it reading anything off those platters is slim to nothing 😂
I'd probably also scratch up the platters just to be sure.
About why it wouldn't boot on the original computer, if I had to guess, it's simply because it's old, so it's still using the old-school BIOS / MBR booting process, while Windows 11 requires an UEFI / GPT system. Even if it wasn't the case, Windows 11 isn't actually compatible with Core 2 anymore, like, at all, it doesn't even boot because it requires CPU instructions that first appeared in Core i 2nd generation (don't quote me on the exact generation).
Also, ladies and gentlemen, that is why Microsoft now forces BitLocker on new installation of Windows, just like Apple uses their T2 chip to encrypt, so people can't leak their ENTIRE LIFE because they couldn't be bothered to format or destroy a drive (not that a regular format is secure, but at least, it's SOMETHING).
@@MrCed122 yeah, that figures. Like I said, I’m not familiar with windows 11 at all lol. And yeah, wiping you HDD usually still isn’t enough, but it’s a far cry better than this.
Win11 doesn't actually need uefi/gpt, my pc has MBR currently but win11 works.
@@thewindows11fanBut if the drive uses the GPT partition format like the overwhelming majority of Windows 11 installs do then a Windows XP era PC wont be able to recognize it as bootable since it can't understand GPT only MBR.
yeah, have fun when your windows 11 breaks after some idiotic update from microsoft and you can't access any data on your encrypted disc
@@istvandjumber6474Exactly!!!.
Whoever this was that had this drive propably got a scare. He almost definitely got notifications about new device logins
Well, I sure hope so 😂
your windows 11 wouldnt boot in the old machine since the machine doesnt support efi boot
Yep
This is why I tell family members, especially my nieces and nephews to never just throw out their old laptops.
I remember sending a cruddy gaming laptop I bought off Walmart to their warranty service and literally had a similar experience with the hard drive _they themselves_ installed in place of the failed one that my system had.
Wow, that’s pretty bad. They could get sued for that imo
I work in IT & do repairs etc; that metal case with the plastic sled & metal mounting pins is from a Dell- It would fit perfectly in one of the Dell Dimension 5100 series.
However the partitions are without a doubt cloned from an ASUS- they are the only major company that puts windows on the 1st Partition, the user data (set by changing the system variables) gets routed to Partition 2, & is always named DATA. Partition 3 is always a hidden partition to be booted from either the ASUS Recovery partition when enabled, or accessed through the ASUS system portal. It can easily be enabled through Ranish, GParted or many other Linux / 3rd Party Windows tools.
In my line of work it is required by law (in 43 states) that I attempt to contact the individual by email, Phone# & or Federal mail & waiting no less than one month- 28/30/31 days & no less, Prior to me wiping & formatting, re-using or selling the drive, PC or components.
OR pursuant to local law- turn it over to police for a period of 3 months- after which, if the individual cannot be found, it would then legally belong to me, assuming there wasn't some form of incriminating evidence on it that they need to investigate, & retain the drive for evidence.
Hey, thanks a lot for the info. Super fascinating, so glad to hear from someone who actually has a background in this stuff. Anyway, where I live, I don’t think we have to many laws regarding cyber security. Or I’m just completely oblivious.
I bought an old Toshiba laptop a while back, still had it's hard drive in it and yes, when I looked it had all the original owners details on there - he was a doctor of some kind and there were a lot of old health related documents of hundreds of his patients still accessible, plus all his internet history and log ins, and then I checked his pictures directory and it was full of pornography, of course. And it just kept getting worse, there were hundreds of pictures of his wife or girlfriend (you can guess what sort of pictures I'm talking about here) plus weirdly lots of pornographic images of ladies with other ladies heads badly composited into the pictures - and then it became obvious these 'heads' were actually people he knew, there were some pictures of what looked like parties and gatherings and you guessed it, that was the source of the 'heads'. It was pretty disturbing, frankly. I shredded the contents of course. Some people just haven't a clue when it comes to their data and how to dispose of their old hard drives.
Yikes, that’s pretty bad. I’ve found personal files plenty of times, since I mess around with old computers so much, but this (a new installation with passwords and login info) is a first for me
HAHA IS ALL MOST ON EVERY COMPUTER ...*
(YOURS TO HAVE STUFF ON)
DONT PLAY JESUS
I recognize that hdd caddy, it looks like it definitely came out of a dell optiplex 3020, 7020, or 9020 desktop.
Also, coming from someone who’s dug through a recycling center in my town for 2 years, ive seen my whole fare share of data from people who never wipe their hard drives.
Hey, yeah, it is from a dell! Also, yeah, I have a friend who recycles old HW, and yeah, he has A BUNCH of old HDD’s. Curious how many of them have data like this. Crazy.
I'm pretty sure the drive caddy the HDD was in is from a Dell Optiplex OEM desktop!
Also, you should definitely contact the owner of the HDD and tell them to protect their data/wipe old drives, etc
Could be!
If enough people watch the video/request it, I’ll make a follow up video, how bout that?
Yup, it sure is a Dell OEM caddy, though not 100% sure if it's from Optiplex, since Inspirons have pretty much the same ones.
@@OptiplexAircraft true, I saw the shade of blue and thought of Dell lol
I like to take hard drives apart when they stop working, the strong magnets are really good for holding key chains.
after I am done with them no data can be recovered, I hope...
Terrifying HDD I Found in the Dumpster what bad things did he find on it?🤔🤔
I also used to dismantle them for magnets and motors. Super fun to play around with as a kid
This caddy is from a Dell Optiplex, it's identical to the one in the 9020 but they could use it in other models.
Thanks for letting me know 🤟
this is a really good example of why you should always overwrite a drive when your getting rid of it. formatting can still be recovered, overwriting or zeroing it out is a much cleaner option
@@AppoapsisStudios Especially HDD. Modern SSD’s are much harder to recover data from if it’s been wiped, just because how it’s stored on there.
even better - I "overwrite" the data with a hammer. a drill also works well.
I did the same thing and got someone SSN, Address, name Phone number etc. Literally shredded the HDD afterword's. To an unrecognizable level.
Good job man. I’ll wipe this HDD and use it in an old rig of some sort. I keep all my used HDDs, I always need spares for projects
When I dumped my Precision Workstations in California last month... I used a Drill Press to destroy the Drives. I can buy replacement Workstations in the Philippines for next to nothing.
If the information is crucial, it’s not worth losing sleep over it, that’s very true.
The First PC couldnt boot due to Windows using UEFI instead of The Legacy/Bios that motherboard understood, you can tell because the drive will have an EFI partition. Great Video with a very hooking title and thumbnail! Keep it up mate!
Windows 11 also only supports UEFI.
@@white_mask13 thanks so much man, glad you liked it! 🤟 And thanks for the info.
That cage is from a Dell Optiplex SFF. Would have been in a PC sporting a 2nd to 4th gen I series Intel CPU. Something like an Optiplex 990 9020.
Hey, thanks a lot for the info! 🤟
Wiping the drive with a boot USB disk wiping utility is usually what I do.
It’s the least you could do
This is just straight up terrifying and seriously dangerous. Before you dump anything storage whether HDD SSD SD card flash drive Always make sure it truely dead by wiping it or break it physically. He just straight out lucky here that this man didn't do anything.
@@nightadmin283 HDD especially, they are super easy to recover files from (if they work).
SSD drives require dedicated software from their manufacturers that will do a complete safe erasure of all data that would lead to an unrecoverable state. SSD's do have finite read write cycles and using an unapproved method of wiping the drive could lead to rendering the drive useless.
If your getting rid of a Drive always open it up and take the platters out, along with the 2 strong magnets. You only need a torx screwdriver set to do this and it only takes like 5 minutes. You can fully erase the platters with the magnets if you want, but once there out from their control board they are not getting data off it without a very specialized tools and weeks of recovery time and none at all if you ran the magnets over the platters. You also end up with a neat collection of shiny disks if you don't toss them. I always keep the magnets and platters tossing the controlboard\motor. The magnets are super strong so becareful with them.
I have had hard drives come to me still ready to go with a complete set of documents, still signed into Google Chrome with all the logins saved, and I chuck them into a machine as second disk, format and the data wipe them. People don't often realise the dangers they put them selves in. He probably didn't know because the disk didn't boot any more and he considered it broken, so essentially for him it was job done. Sad isn't it?!?
@@fairmania probably what I’ll end up doing with this drive too. And yeah, it’s actually kinda scary.
I think the reason the old computer wouldn't boot from the hard drive is because it doesn't support UEFI. Windows 11 requires UEFI, and will not boot on a system that only supports BIOS or is configured to use Legacy boot.
Yep, thanks!
I usually run the "clean all" command in diskpart before selling or getting rid of an HDD. It essentially sets all the blocks to 0. DBAN is also a great program to completely wipe hard drives.
I mean, just wiping it honestly would get you 99.9% there.
With both virtualbox and vmware, you can point a VM to a physical disk and use that as a boot device. Sometimes the disk device permissions can be a bit fiddly, but it's easier than going through the storage locker.
A friend's dad always drills some holes in every electronic device containing information before throwing it away, this is exactly why
you can access the same way with 2 factor authentication because it would be like opening chrome on your own computer, it won't ask for the password every time you open it
Since it was on a different hardware, I’d figure it would ask for conformation on the other end.
I never would have expected this to have a standard Win11 install on it given that crazy caddy/mount it was in. I figured for sure it’d have been part of some RAID setup or something.
That white iMac (iMac G5) that you took out first is a bit more valuable because most of those model macs didn’t have a camera unlike the one you have
I’m pretty sure that’s an Intel Core 2 Duo model. Haven’t checked it yet.
I also found an old imac with the entire life of a woman. Email pictures of her and her girlfiend, downloaded movies and mucic. The mac wasn't even password protected. Luckily for her I found that and wiped everything.
As I’ve said in some previous comments, it’s super common for me to find that stuff, since I go through many old computers. But most of them are pre-internet/social media era, and I kinda don’t blame those people for not wiping the HDD, since they really had no concept of their data being leaked “out there”. But this, holy crap. Pretty insane.
I was in your situation less than a week ago, found an entire PC. Motherboard turned out to be dead, everything else is functional. I don't bother booting up drives and looking around.
I Connect them to a burner PC with no internet access. -> Open Hard Disk Sentinel -> Reinitialize disk surface (Formats the drive and addresses weak sectors if present) -> Wait. That's it.
The reason it would not boot is that all DELL Optiplex are shipped with RAID configured in the BIOS, which is crazy, and why they do that is beyond me, all regular comPuters are set to AHCI.
10:13 It might still be fairly old, even with Win11 installed. Windows has been upgradable at no additional cost since at least 7, maybe even Vista (my own PC is running Win10 on my original Win7 license, and the only reason it's not on 11 is that its 4th gen Intel is a couple of generations too old). So, even disregarding the possibility that it was an older drive recycled into a new PC, it might have been in use in the same PC since as far back as 2015.
Probably, I mean the drive itself is definitely old, I was referring more to the installation.
Interestingly enough, I watched your video on the ASUS computer you found in the trash and was wondering if I’d ever find a computer in my apartment’s dumpster. Lo and behold, one day I saw a keyboard sticking out of the top and when I looked in I saw an old Dell Optiplex all in one! When I plugged it in it booted into the original owner’s account with no password. It was incredibly slow and filled with viruses from a kid trying to download cracked games and roblox hacks on a family PC. It was also filled with sensitive info like tax returns and resumes. It hadn’t been used in a year so their accounts were signed out luckily. I ended up reinstalling Windows and it works great, but could use an SSD upgrade. It’s not fast but it handles UA-cam well and the display looks great. I’m glad I found it before the info could get into the wrong hands.
@@Evan420 Hey, that’s awesome! So glad you were able to get it working. And when going through old computers I CONSTANTLY find unprotected accounts and personal files, but this was different. Like, this was a new installation, and the stuff on there was out of this world.
At my old job, we always drilled holes in old hard drives because the company had no budget to send them to a recycler. I always make sure to encrypt all of my drives just in case.
Better than just leaving them for somebody to find, that’s for sure.
dumb and dangerous to do that, they can be took apart with a few torx screw drivers in less then 5min, and the platters separated from the chassis, you can then take the 2 powerful magnets that are inside them and apply them to the metal platters fully erasing them if your really paranoid.
It look very much like the caddy for HDD and ODD from a Dell Optiplex system.
I would send an email from and to his address telling him you found the drive with all his data intact and advise him to not throw away any other drive in the future without wiping it clean or physically destroy it.
Yep, it is from a Dell. As far as what to do now, I’ll have to think about it tbh
I used to live in an apartment complex and had another tenant throw away a whole system irresponsibly. The system still booted and had a lot of family pictures on it as well as tax information and social security numbers. Fortunately for them I don't steal identities, I wiped the drive and used it for other things.
About 6-7 months ago, I bought an ssd from a person on the internet, when I plugged it in my pc to use it, it had windows installed on it, and it booted right away, it not only had the previous owner programs and such, but all of their accounts were still logged in, I could see everything, and the worst part, THEIR BANK ACCOUNT WAS LOGGED IN TOO, I could easily wipe the account clean if I wanted, but instead i contacted them and warned about it, and of course I wiped the drive, still use the ssd as my boot drive
If you're going to dispose or sell a hdd or ssd, WIPE THE DRIVE PLEASE
That’s very nice of you to do. Of course I’ll wipe the drive, but I’m not giving it to anyone, I’ll likely just use it for one of my projects or something.
BSPlayer ... now that's a program I haven't seen in almost 20 years.
Dumpster diving often pays off - I actually found an Amiga 3000 once - back when they were already worth ~600€. Of course fully working with *very* light battery damage. Sadly the HDD died after 3-4 days.
Wow. Insane it actually worked in the first place.
in the UK knowingly accessing someone else's data is an impressionable offence -
I don’t think it’s illegal here, but honestly I don’t really care. I haven’t done anything wrong. Sue me 😂
This is crazy…. This is pure madness. So scary! Send him a message to educate him about good practices ! He needs it!!
Great (scary) video!
@@neurobioboy if the video blows up, I’ll do it 😂
Really scary! But great video again! Please upload more and more
@@Zene-vu6fm Hey, man, I upload twice a week! 🤟 Thanks, glad you enjoyed.
People upgrade and they dont bother wiping the drives, this happens all the time, My terrifying realisation of this was getting a free HP Proliant DL360 that was the SQL database for a sensitive organization containing hundreds of gigabytes of personal and employee records.
That’s crazy. It’s one thing when individuals do it, but a company doing that is just… insane.
This reminds me of when I discovered two old desktops just placed against the wall in one of the buildings at my university. I took a closer look, saw that they were made to run Windows XP, and contemplated taking out the hard drives to see if I could find some old software on them, but the hard drives had been removed. Which, considering that there could've been people like me, but with nefarious intentions happening to appear there, was probably for the best.
Hope nobody took it out before you and had their way with it lol
@@schvabek Oh yeah... _that's_ a possibility. How did that slip my mind?
I had a couple of drives that were stored for a time and refused to spin up so I took a sledge to them. They are surprisingly tough so I took them apart and made sure the platters were ruined before throwing them away
lol, way to go! Seems like a great way to get the stress out 😂
I am with my headphones on and when you opened that dumpster I thought someine was breaking into my house lmao
@@calaveracode4235 hahaha sorry I scared you 😂
i once found a retro hard drive in an abandoned pc and when i plugged it in it worked, it was unwiped. you know the saying "curiosity killed the cat"? well i checked the documents folder and i saw pornography.
Yeah, that can happen. Hopefully it wasn’t child porn or something horrible. But yeah, if you’re not ready to see that stuff, you’re just better off not going through old hard drives.
I once bought a bunch of SSD's from an e-waste recycler on ebay to build a RAID 0 array. Every single one of them had a windows installation with personal information.
Yikes!
13:13 Even if he did get some login notifications he probably wouldn't have immediately connected that to the hard drive he chucked
I guess, I don’t know. Who knows.
Could've been worst for the owner. Awesome video!
Thanks man, really appreciate it 🤟❤️
I would just wipe the data. There is no telling the circumstances surrounding how the drive ended up in the dumpster. IMHO It's not worth risking retaliation if your unsolicited steps in educating that individual doesn't go your way. Good deeds rarely go unpunished.
Yeah, I was also thinking that. I’d be curious to get in touch with them, perhaps the laptop belongs to them as well.
LOL at all the "OH THAT'S BAD"
@@markae0I mean, it is!! 😂
Remember a Core 2 computer doesn't know UEFI boot, only BIOS/MBR boot!
Yep.
I would call the guy's cell phone, tell him exactly what happened, and how lucky he is that someone not nefarious got a hold of the drive and what he should do. Because I have a moral standing due to my faith in Jesus Christ, I would help the guy protect his online data. (I am a little tech savvy myself. BTW, love the content).
Thanks man! I’ll have to think about what to do, honestly.
Wow that Icybox takes me back. Used to have one of those too before it decided to blow mild smoke.
Really? This one is old as balls, still kicking. Seems pretty foolproof. Perhaps just the capacitors gave out the ghost.
Hi, i also bought a iPhone Xr today from the flea and it was turned off, it was icloud locked so i bought for spare parts, but when i turned it on it didn’t have a password and it had lots of photos, google accounts, bank accounts; contacts; spotify/netflix;betting app accounts and much more, also had his I.D. and stuff decided it was best log out of his icloud ( he had the password saved and i entered it) then i reseted the phone. I can’t imagine what whould of happened if it got into the wrong hands
Makes me wonder if the original owner of the hard drive and NBC died. Then someone (landlord perhaps) who wasn't too tech savvy, just tossed it. The caddy the HDD was in made me think it was going to be installed in a NAS. Once there the NAS would format and overwrite it. So wiping the drive wasn't necessary.
I typically never look that far in. I've been building PC's for 25 years, people will just give you so many things. A surprising number of laptops, when they don't turn on and I can't get it to fire up easily, they don't want to order a board 90% of the time. They also know it is safe with me, and if it gets recycled, it will be wiped.
A most important lesson! Don't just toss your HDD in some random trash, properly dispose of it.
I know man, I just couldn’t believe someone would do that, and I thought perhaps all the passwords/login info had expired, and I wouldn’t be able to log in. But nope.
@@schvabek The other thing I was thinking, was if they needed to dispose of the OS, for the GPS data or some type of footprint that leads back to some unsavory things. Criminal dumps the evidence without dumping the entire machine. Which is harder to do with a laptop also, especially if you're in a hurry.
@ I wouldn’t read that far into it. Someone was probably just careless. Although who knows, right.
@@schvabek Yeah, odds are it's not anything that serious, especially with how everything was not suspicious at all. But you could certainly use it for your next best selling mystery novel! Instead of not much of anything, the first thing you see is Tor Browser, now you're being chased by human traffickers across five countries.
Well, when you see a serial called "Zabranjena ljubav" written in all caps and wrong (f instead of v), you can be pretty sure that's not a bright bulb.
Zabranjena ljubaF!! 😂 Bez predrasuda, molim. Osobno sam gledao kad sam bio u osnovnoj 😂
That motherboard doesn't support newer versions of windows because Safe boot and TPM 2.0 Wasn't a Bios Option, However you can create a bootable win 11 USB with Rufus and Bypass all the Hardware checks ;) UEFI AND Legacy Are important too
Some people are very carless with protecting there data. I once found a Hard drive that was from a small business and found an excel worksheet containing all the employees sensitive information like addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers.
i buy hard drives from my local flea market from time to time. Every hard drive i bought had data on it, and in some cases, completely bootable windows installs. I go though the data and if i see music i would like to listen to i copy it. Then the drive gets a low-level format and I chuck it aside for future use.
It’s very common for me to find personal data while going through old computers I collect. But this was something else man.
"AOC" . Now I understand the terrifying part.
Can’t say I follow
Hard drives are so inexpensive now-a-days, I would have smashed the throw-away drive with a hammer or better yet, used it for target practice on the shooting range before tossing it in the trash. That person is so lucky that a conscience person like you found it. Kudos!
Thanks man ❤ HDDs are super fun to take apart, too. Salvage parts from. Cheers!
"It's time to look for those Bitcoins hee heeeeee" total got me hahahahaha
Glad I made you smile ❤
The caddy the drive was in suggests it was in some Dell SFF system (probably an optiplex)
Yep, most likely
Accessing accounts without authorization, regardless of how you do it (found hdd, etc.), is illegal depending on the country you are in.
Pretty sure it’s not illegal in my country. I didn’t steal anything nor did I misuse anything. It was all for educational purposes
This is definitely getting into a gray area. If you were showing people the dangers of not wiping their hard drives and throwing them away by using an HDD you own and accounts you own, then I would see no problem with this. Signing into someone else's email or Instagram account without direct and explicit permission from the account owner, regardless if you steal anything or leak any of their information is definitely not something I would do. It is illegal in the US, Canada, Australia, EU, and many many other countries.
Win 11 requires a TPM, which the machine doesn't have
Yep
damn, this is really scary! Good that you are good preson
Thanks man ❤
Just more evidence that wiping any drive before you discard it is not optional. Even if the drive is unrecoverable, someone with a bit of knowledge can make a clean environment and recover a spinning disk like this to where it can get data pulled off it.
the instant you tried booting from it in the first system and it wouldn't work, my first thought was "that's windows 11, which is most likely UEFI on a GUID partition table, and that doesn't look like a system that boots UEFI". it doesn't look like you quite came around to that conclusion, so I can say I'm 99% sure that's why you couldn't boot it.
That first PC cannot boot Windows 11 because it is hardware-incompatible. The Core 2 Duo platform lacks a UEFI BIOS, and I believe the CPU lacks a particular instruction set, both of which Windows 11 requires.
The caddy looks like it's from a dell Optiplex 9020
your videos are so calming 😌👍
I'm so glad man! Enjoy ❤
The old computers BIOS that do not recognize GPT partitions do not know how to boot from it. That is why your old PC did not booted. Also, as a side note, even XP properly booted, would not read the partitions on that HDD.
The new UEFI computer managed to boot from the HDD but because there is another hardware (speciffically I think to the SATA controller), Windows failed to load the drivers and BSOD. That is why after repairing (when Windows founded and installed the appropriate set of SATA drivers), it managed to boot and correctly load the OS.
Sad that someone can trash his data so easy, many people give no importance to theirs precious data until is too late.
Btw, if you move to the 7nt floor, for sure you will have plenty of space :)
Yeah, it’s probably what it was.
Hahahaha moving to the seventh floor actually doesn’t sound like a bad option 😂 But no, I’m moving to a house, I’ll make a bunch of videos on that, setting up my new space etc.
Contact him immediately. Maybe it wasn't him who threw away the HDD. Maybe he paid someone to repair his PC. I would even give the HDD to the local data protection officer. (in German: Datenschutzbeauftragter).
And this is why you encrypt the storage on your computers. LUKS on Linux and BitLocker on Windows Pro. Don't have Windows Pro? Then pay the fee to upgraded, then encrypt your data. Yes, you'll need to enter a, hopefully 20-30 character, password, but mitigating the risk is well worth typing a few extra characters at boot. Honestly, Microsoft should do everybody a favor and enable BitLocker on every edition of Windows. :-/ Does Apple have have encryption for Macs?
Apple encryption is pretty tight. Also, wiping the drive with just Disk Utility zeroes the disk. HDDs are quite different in that aspect when compared to SSD’s, just in the way they store the data. They are quite a bit easier to recover data from.
8:20 - maybe your test pc doesn't support uefi boot method. And ye, some solutions -
1: test usb created from rufus in mbr mode (right from this you can and should see bios legacy. Of course just to load uefi based os) (and yes, it maybe won't work on some machines.)
2: ventoy - super useful program, where you can just boot any of os from iso files (maybe include macos, just maybe, if interest - google is your help buddy). And one thing about ventoy - based on grub, so won't work with secure boot turn on.
3: opencore bootloader on usb stick - made for mac, but work on other devices too. (Mac has proprietary uefi unfortunately... But opencore can run other things, as i remember).
4: just another pc, as you show later on the video.
Maybe my comment help you) gn or gd!
Just using another computer is the easiest option for me by far. Lord knows I have enough of them lol
they should have wiped it before throwing away
Nice video
👍
Thanks brother 🤟
her can i find the icy box desktop external usb 2.0 sata drive enclosure
How tf are you guys so lucky to find working computers and free storage in dumpsters? I wish i had such a chance.
You should probably format the drive and forget about it. I wouldn't contact the guy. But that's just me.
Yeah, actually what I’ll do most likely. You just don’t know how the person will react
Maybe just try to call and get to know the issue on why he threw it maybe 😅😂
Perhaps 🤷♂️ I’m super curious, perhaps the laptop is his as well!
Who knows, he could have passed away and his family just throw away his stuff, But if he is still alive, I would contact him and let him know.
I found a PC on a dumpster with a 480GB SSD, i regret so mutch not booting it to windows and hunt for personal info
Did you say six floors and no elevator? OMG
Yeah. Great workout though 😂
haven't seen the angry middle finger at the tech in a while :( but you upload great content so i will have to manage :b
Yeah, it made a comeback 😂Sorry it made you mad ❤
He probibly could not get the drive to boot up and thought it was useless. I have one perfectly good gaming PC that just shows a black screen after a storm we had. I still have it in a closet. One day I will get it out and see if I can fix it.
I wish there were more people like you. ❤
Thanks man, appreciated ❤