Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

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I'm bordering on it. But many reasons cause it not just one.

I'm a typical IT pack-rat with cables, old PCs, laptops, many old parts. Hard drives are a risk since I don't want to toss due to not know what is on it (Bitcoin?) or have my personal data stolen, or just something I may miss copying from it.

My Dad died so much of his stuff is now essentially junk. But to me it's sentimental even things that I have no need for like his shoes, his clothes. My Mom tossed a lot of it out practically the day after his funeral. He has piles of tools, paint, gloves, coveralls.

Recycling rules. The local company makes it very hard for people to get rid of items. Much of it means you need a car to take it and drop it off. When there you enter a large building and some guy points to a pile and you have to drag it there. Anything big like wood has to be less than four feet in length and less than 40 pounds. Any elderly or those without a car or even a truck in cases like old mattresses are out of luck.

Just age and lack of stamina too or mentally not wanting to do the work of sorting through it. Mu Mom is nearly 80 and doing "The Big Cleanout" as older people do when they are nearing that time in life. But she tosses or gives away things at random without asking a family member if they want it.

There can be many layers to hoarding if it is that or just too much stuff or just being lazy I'm not sure where the line is.

In Europe, and I mean literally anywhere in it, renting a van to move, or even just throwing out big useless garbage is a normal thing. You pay a bit but win much more (space, freedom etc). Having to do this additional step should not be good enough reason to no throw something out.

Its all a burden, on your body but much more on your mind. I understand that it brings back memories, but you shouldn't remember given person by keeping their hoard. And that 1 in 100 items that is actually useful doesn't change any of it.

I've seen it done countless times, last time few months ago my parents were cleaning whole apartment after grandparents died. We each picked few small items to keep, and literally everything else went to dumpster. So liberating.

Good rule of thumb for anything, anywhere, anybody - if you can buy it with a reasonable sum, item is worthless long term and should be no burden to you. Cherish those things that are not replaceable - photos, gifts handcrafted for you. The rest, whether you have it or not doesn't change anything long term in life. Thus is largely meaningless for your happiness. Thus it can go anytime, no big deal.

A few things I've learned (mostly) as I've become less of a packrat than I once was.

-- You just need to get into a mood sometimes where you go to your attic, garage, or whatever and get rid of the old computers and stuff you're never going to do anything with. Yes, there's some nerdy kid who might want that old laptop but I don't know who they are and I'm not going to waste a lot of time finding out.

-- Try not to let things get to the point where even contemplating doing some sorting and winnowing is so painful that you just lie down until the feeling goes away.

-- Digitize as much as you can. OK, you're still something of a digital packrat, especially without good metadata, but at least it doesn't take up space.

-- I've found leaving some larger objects out by the road with a free sign can be pretty effective.

At least where I live, there are junk removal services but that presupposes being organized enough to have a big pile that can be taken away some day.

ADDED: It's almost certainly true that people in the US, especially outside of urban cores, do tend to live in larger homes so it can be very tempting to just hang onto stuff rather than going through the work of sorting and disposing.

>In Europe, and I mean literally anywhere in it, renting a van to move, or even just throwing out big useless garbage is a normal thing.

It doesn't matter how convenient it is to rent a van, when neither you, nor the people inside your social circle, know how to actually drive a van. I've had a regular car driver's license for decades. An EV van is a whole different beast, as I found out the hard way while helping a friend move between apartments.

The U-Haul vans are made to be easy to drive for regular drivers. I haven't had any trouble with them.

For example, they have big side mirrors, so you have an excellent view of where the back corners are.

I don't understand. There's nothing special or difficult about driving a regular van or moving truck. I've never had any special training and I just went and did it when necessary since I was 16. We're not talking about a commercial heavy truck here.

Yes, just make sure to take corners wider than one would in a car.

I assume you live in the US. In Europe, streets are usually narrower, parking spots even more so, in urban areas there will be more pedestrians crossing the road randomly, and many people don't even possess a driver's license in the first place, or don't own a car. My original comment was just to point out that getting rid of clutter isn't as easy as "just take a van and dump the clutter in a landfill."

> Hard drives are a risk since I don't want to toss due to not know what is on it (Bitcoin?) or have my personal data stolen, or just something I may miss copying from it.

Today you can buy a 20T drive for under $300. You can copy all your old drives to it, and then get rid of the old drives. As for stolen data, you can:

1. put it on a drill press and run a 3/8 drill through the platter

2. put your safety glasses on and give it a mighty blow from a sledgehammer

I suppose the NSA, at great expense and effort, might still be able to retrieve a few bytes from it, but even they aren't that desperate for your copy of Oregon Trail.

BTW, I'm a hoarder myself and understand the problem.

Dissolving in acid seems like the safest/most overkill option: <https://youtu.be/L0bcNm1gfpU>.

I recommend disassembling hard disks and keeping the magnets, they're super useful to have to capture loose screws and the like. Glue one to the end of a stick or telescoping pointer and you have a way to retrieve magnetic things that fall behind furniture.

You could also literally wipe your data by using a little sandpaper on the platters if you really wanted to.

Is there a way to reliably scrub the drives to make sure they're reusable? I know storage is cheap but it's destroying the drive really the only way to ensure data integrity?

I'm a big fan of recycling old electronics wherever possible. Would the cost of compute to virtually destroy the data on the drive so it can be safely reused as storage exceed the cost of physically destroying the drive and then recycling the raw materials?

I know for some cases true destruction is the best way to mitigate data theft in this case but... That's a bit heavy handed for an 80% use case, innit?

Edit: personally I always check what's on my old drives before decomming them but I think I'm an outlier here

Nuke it.

8 times rewrite.

"She's dead, Jim." No kill like overkill!

Just overwriting once with all zeroes (or anything else) is enough; for modern drives (where “modern” means “last 25 years”). It’s basically impossible to recover data after that.

That's what I figured- I've never actually tested it though because I don't have any spare drives sitting around anymore.

One of these days though I'll get around to zeroing out a drive and then running Autopsy on it for shiggles just to see what comes back up. Should be a fun experience!

> or anything else

I recommend overwriting with an endless loop of the freeway scene from "Solaris".

i would have gone with meatspin or ytmnd but to each their own

>1. put it on a drill press and run a 3/8 drill through the platter

I briefly worked IT for a federal police agency and that is what they did.

I don't think I'll do that though plus I don't have a metal bit sharp enough. I'd research how to sharpen a metal bit on a grinder. Get sidetracked and look up how to harden metal bits. Then metallurgy and different metal and what exactly is hardening how does it change the crystal structure. Is metal actually a crystal? and so on....

> I don't think I'll do that though plus I don't have a metal bit sharp enough.

You don't need a special bit for this. Most of a hard drive is made of soft aluminum; a standard drill bit will go right through it.

> Much of it means you need a car to take it and drop it off. When there you enter a large building and some guy points to a pile and you have to drag it there. Anything big like wood has to be less than four feet in length and less than 40 pounds. Any elderly or those without a car or even a truck in cases like old mattresses are out of luck.

You can get rid of all of that real quick by dragging it to the curb and leaving it near a fire hydrant (don't block it though). Call it in yourself and say that someone left an item that is blocking the fire hydrant.

Yes, it's illegal and dishonest, but not enough is done to help people actually get rid of this crap. There's no accountability in the other direction. You call Waste Management for a large item pickup and you're lucky if they ever show, or when they do they leave without picking it up because of more arbitrary rules (too heavy, too bulky, too many pee stains, whatever). Yet leaving it near a fire hydrant ensures someone shows up with whatever it takes to load the item and leave.

It's unfortunate that you blame Waste Management, a private company that is simply doing what they are paid to do (or not doing what they aren't paid to do). If you are expecting them to do something that you or your city hasn't paid them to do, how is that possibly right of you?

> If you are expecting them to do something that you or your city hasn't paid them to do, how is that possibly right of you?

It is a paid service, hence my complaint-- they bill you after pickup. To get them to pick it up, you have to leave it on the curb, where you remain responsible for it. When they fail to pick it up as scheduled, you eventually get fined by the city or the HOA for dumping-- and you still have to deal with it somehow, like lugging it all back into your house.

This is the sort of situation you don't win (all risk, no reward), so there's no point in playing by the rules. The city makes it WM's problem. WM makes it your problem. So make it the city's problem again and stop them from passing the buck. I'm not saying it's right, only that it's a solution.

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