Secure wiping a HD

digitaldreams

digitaldreams

digitaldreams

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Anyone know of a utility (hopefully free) that can be booted (floppy/CD) to securely wipe a HD ?. I need to remove personal information before selling a drive.

I'm talking at least several wipe passes, as 'CCleaner' can from the dekstop...

Regards
 
You don't need to do any more than a single pass with zero's, unless you're selling it to someone who will dissemble it and try to use an electron microscope?. This is free and runs from within Windows, DBAN is a freeware bootdisk but very slow for some reason..
 
digitaldreams said:
Anyone know of a utility (hopefully free) that can be booted (floppy/CD) to securely wipe a HD ?. I need to remove personal information before selling a drive.

I'm talking at least several wipe passes, as 'CCleaner' can from the dekstop...

Regards
Click to expand...

Its not possible, you can always get info off them with the right tools/software.

A hammer is your only 100% choice.
 
postmanfw said:
How much do you want for postage :)

Very hard to destroy data off hard drives....unless using a hammer ;)
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Whatever RMSD is, £5 for a HDD as I recall.

I'll find an old drive, fill it with data, and then zero it using dd.

If you think you can just run it through software then don't bother as it's simply not possible.
 
This will do you, worked for me.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

boot of the disk, enter 'autonuke' at prompt, takes about 4hrs for an 80Gb Hd.

Good stuff!!!....scanned disk with a pro copy of Power Data Recovery afterwards, and it didnt find a thing....:)

"DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis."
 
Unless you happen to have an electron microscope that actually has a resolution high enough to separate the individual bits on the platter, a couple of months and a load of money, i don't think you are going to be able to get absence jam's porno collection back ;)
 
lord filbuster said:
Unless you happen to have an electron microscope that actually has a resolution high enough to separate the individual bits on the platter, a couple of months and a load of money, i don't think you are going to be able to get absence jam's porno collection back ;)
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I looked into this recently and I could not find any evidence which suggests there have been any successful data recovery operations using electron microscopy. There are papers from Gutmann but they don't actually contain any evidence of data recovery, just theories. I very much doubt that even organisations such as the NSA attempt anything like this, despite a million people on the internet spouting off about the CIA/aliens being able to recover your data.

tntcoder said:
That is very very wrong. It may cost 5k+ to get the data back, but you would be naive to think it cant be recovered.
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Tell me how they recover the data then?
 
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ah, i don't think i put enough sarcasm into it ;)
I don't think it is possible to recover the data even with just a simple one pass wipe.
It might cost 5k to get the data back from a drive with a damaged motor or head, but once it is wiped it is gone for good. You don't even have to cause a lot of damage to make even this impossible, even bending the platter slightly will destroy most of the data, since the bits are so close together in modern drives.
 
It is almost possible to destory all data on a HDD, with the right tools, but it takes along LONG time to destroy and requires multiple passes, as some data will not change for so many delete (zero requests). Plus you then have the fact each 'zero bit' then has the state it was in before still stored really, zero or one, and that goes for many passes too. Which is why the best programs will take a long LONG time to completely destroy data. Hardware destroying is the only real secure way, and it generates pulses somewhat similar to Nuclear bombs apparently.

A hammer will also do nothing. If you think that destroys data you are surely mistaken. Just because you cannot then use the disc in your PC doesn't mean your data isn't recoverable.
 
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dillingerdan said:
It is almost possible to destory all data on a HDD, with the right tools, but it takes along LONG time to destroy and requires multiple passes, as some data will not change for so many delete (zero requests). Plus you then have the fact each 'zero bit' then has the state it was in before still stored really, zero or one, and that goes for many passes too. Which is why the best programs will take a long LONG time to completely destroy data. Hardware destroying is the only real secure way, and it generates pulses somewhat similar to Nuclear bombs apparently.

A hammer will also do nothing. If you think that destroys data you are surely mistaken. Just because you cannot then use the disc in your PC doesn't mean your data isn't recoverable.
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Deleting and zero requests? You haven't got a clue about what you're blathering on about.
 
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