A disk which a tabloid said carries personal details on some 100,000 serving British military personnel is lost, the Ministry of Defense said Friday.

The military acknowledged a report in The Sun newspaper that contractor EDS lost track of a portable hard drive, but said it could not comment on the claim that it restricted names, addresses, passport numbers and driver’s license knowledge of service personnel along with goods on 600,000 potential recruits.

“We don’t know what’s on it, and we don’t even know whether there’s anything on it,” a ministry of defense spokesman said, speaking anonymously in line with military policy.

A government mandated input shield review was unable to detail for the disk, according to EDS UK, the British subsidiary of Plano, Texas-based EDS. It said the disk was being stored at its secure facility in Hook, a town about 45 miles west of London when it went lost.

EDS refused to say whether the

The military said it was investigating the incident, which it said became known earlier that week.

The loss is one in a series of info breaches at the ministry. Last month it said a disk carrying sensitive personnel data was stolen from a military base. Earlier that year the military said a laptop with details of 600,000 new and prospective recruits was stolen.

The British government has struggled to get a handle on goods losses even as it rolls out an ambitious national identification card program. Last year’s loss of computer disks containing data — including banking records — on nearly half the U.K. population caught universal attention, and a steady stream of info blunders since thereupon has kept the spotlight on the way the government stores and handles details.

EDS, an data technology company, has worked on a range of British government projects, including providing support for…

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