For anyone with a copier
- Thread starter pappy19
- Start date
...That's scary! I wonder if the small Fax/copier/scanner that we use with our PC's have a hard drive? I've never thought about it. I'm glad you posted this Pappy!I saw that article a couple of days ago. I had no idea that copiers had a storage device. Are we shipping storage devices from the Pentagon to foreign countries that can be read with a free internet program? Makes no sense to me.
According to what I have read, small home and office copiers do not have hard drives.
According to what I have read, small home and office copiers do not have hard drives.
Lefty
Yank
If it is a scanner/fax, it has some type of memory to store the scan/fax until it can transmit it. I dont know how long scans and faxes are stored or how big that memory is.
OK - this is just scary. I knew all fax/copiers had memory but I didn't know that they had HDDs. I'm not worried about mine because I run them til they die and I will be sure to look for a HDD before I dispose of any future copiers. But think about your doctor's office or a credit reporting agency or the IRS!!!
I hadn't thought about the scanner/fax portion. As with Fishers mom, my printer/copier machines are throw away machines. I will look for the chip or drive and remove it. With computers, HD's are destroyed and the machines are never sold or given away. However, few high dollar machines are sold, most are leased. The driver comes and gets it when the lease is up. I have never heard of a doctor, lender, or other user removing the hard drive. Scary
Large photocopiers have HDDs to run their OS own. It's a must. But, HDDs are slow….slower than flash memory, and flash memory is cheap these days. A photocopier would keep temp images in flash for speed, and rarely, if ever, use the HDD….unless explicitly told to do so. Flash is limited, so good code would erase images once a job was done. And even if it weren't there would be no way to pull the data off of flash without high-level Engineering knowledge, original OS code, and a schematic.
However, older copiers would have relied on HDDs as Flash Memory wasn't as prevalent back then, and was very expensive.
The sad things is, no one even thought to steal data from a copier until the idiots at CBS aired this story. What morons. Way to go.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20003449-10391695.html
Personally, I'm more worried about CALEA.
http://www.eff.org/issues/calea
However, older copiers would have relied on HDDs as Flash Memory wasn't as prevalent back then, and was very expensive.
The sad things is, no one even thought to steal data from a copier until the idiots at CBS aired this story. What morons. Way to go.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20003449-10391695.html
Personally, I'm more worried about CALEA.
http://www.eff.org/issues/calea
That was you?
YeOldeStonecat
New member
It's the larger office/business grade MFP's that have hard drives in them, bigger HPs, Canon ImageRunner class, etc. Units that are like....the size of your oven, and larger. //refer to the video they show. Those aren't the little 70 dollar HP or Brother AIW units that homes and small offices may have.
Most business lease or have contracts with larger companies that service/replace these units, such as Copytex/Flotech, Ikon, etc. They do "cleanse" the hardware cycled back in on lease renewals. It's the cheaper places that practice the lazy, shifty way of reselling used hardware.
It's not a matter of speed...the drives are used for as a sort of swap file, and even old slow PATA drives from years ago have way more than enough speed for copiers.
Most business lease or have contracts with larger companies that service/replace these units, such as Copytex/Flotech, Ikon, etc. They do "cleanse" the hardware cycled back in on lease renewals. It's the cheaper places that practice the lazy, shifty way of reselling used hardware.
It's not a matter of speed...the drives are used for as a sort of swap file, and even old slow PATA drives from years ago have way more than enough speed for copiers.
Don't worry, it is not as interesting the second time 'round...
We have an all-in-one HP wireless printer. It has flash memory which it uses to buffer images especially when scanning, but does not retrain them after the job is finished.
Not that I ever print/scan/copy anything of interest, mostly it is the wife and her garden pictures...