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Consumer’s PCs: A Study of Hard Drive Forensics, Data Recovery, and Exploitation

Abstract In this paper, we explore discarded hard disks that were obtained in second-hand markets and attempted to find the types of personal and sensitive files that still remained. With careful observation and scanning, we found that most of the hard disks were not adequately cleaned, and included a rather large of amount of private and sensitive information that could be used in computer crimes. Between 50,000 and 300,000 files containing identifiable information were found on the fifty-five hard drives studied. The results of this study indicate a need for further training concerning proper hard drive erasure.