data security

[Erez D]

hi

one day this week, i started my computer, it behaved very strange - i had a
blank screen for about 2 minutes before i got the boot screen, then it
continued to boot from ... network
the reason was that the hard drive has died. it wasn't even recognized by
the bios.
the computer was 2 months old, so i replaced the hard drive.

when a hard drive dies and it is under warrenty, we need give the old one
when we want it replaced.
usuallyon the hard drive we have some personal things - pictures, documents,
or confidential data if it belonged to a company etc...
assuming the data is backed up (backing-up is an issue for another thread),
we are left with the possibility of someone retriving data from the damaged
drive.
and when the drive is damaged, we can't even access it to erase that info
before replacing it with a new one.

so i though of a solution - use a crypto FS.
but there are many problems with it.
the practical problems are at least:
1. i do not know of a major linux distibution (i.e. redhat/ubuntu etc... )
that fully support crypto-fs out of the box, so if i use it, i will need to
do manual changes every time i upgrade the system.
2. it is not really secured if the key is stored on disk. however if the key
is not stored on disk, then the computer can not acces the data without
human intervention, which is not good either when it comes to servers.

and guys/girls, take my advice and back-up your data every short while.
everybody thinks it will not happen to him. but it does. it is just a matter
of time.

erez.
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