Another NARA hard drive goes missing.

• Position: ARCHIVES - National Archives and Records Administration

On the heels of losing a hard drive full of sensitive data from the Clinton White House and a multi-million-dollar settlement for exposing veterans' sensitive data, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is under investigation for losing another hard drive containing confidential records.

This time, the inspector general of NARA is investigating a potential data breach affecting 70 million U.S. veterans, according to Wired.com. The probe involves a defective hard drive NARA returned to its vendor for repair and recycling without first destroying the data. From there, it went missing.

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The hard drive, which helped power eVetRecs, the system veterans use to request copies of their health records and discharge papers, failed in November 2008, Wired.com reported. At that time, the agency sent it back to the vendor, GMRI, for repair. GMRI could not fix it, so it sent the drive to another contractor to be recycled. The maintenance contract stipulated that if NARA did not return the faulty drive, GMRI would have billed the agency $2,000 for a replacement.

According to Wired.com, the drive was one of six containing an Oracle database with detailed records on 76 million veterans, including millions of Social Security numbers dating back...