How do you zero your drives?

Kaiju · 5 Nov 2011 at 05:44

I've heard of a couple of programs that zero (nuke!) your drive but some users complained those programs rendered their drives unusable.

Would format x: /fs:NTFS /p:2 suffice when selling on your drives?

lcg · 5 Nov 2011 at 08:17

Before selling a drive I run several passes on it using DBAN.

CaptainCrash · 5 Nov 2011 at 08:38

Kaiju said:
I've heard of a couple of programs that zero (nuke!) your drive but some users complained those programs rendered their drives unusable.

Would format x: /fs:NTFS /p:2 suffice when selling on your drives?

Yes, a full format in Win7 or Vista will zero-fill the drive, which will put all the data beyond any hope of recovery. There's no real need for the /P switch, a single pass is enough.

You could use DBAN if you're truly paranoid, but there's no documented evidence that anyone has ever successfully retrieved useful data from a drive which has undergone a simple one-pass zero fill, and it's hard to see how it would be possible even in theory on a modern high-density drive.

Kaiju · 5 Nov 2011 at 09:15

That's what I needed too hear.

Thank you.

Philtor · 6 Nov 2011 at 15:54

DBAN if im selling or giving away the drive. Copywipe is decent aswell.

hohum · 6 Nov 2011 at 20:54

CaptainCrash said:
Yes, a full format in Win7 or Vista will zero-fill the drive, which will put all the data beyond any hope of recovery.

I was under the impression that the reason it takes so long to do a regular format and not a 'quick' format is because it error checks the entire drive, and doesn't actually wipe anything.

Anyway, personally I use DBAN. Just set it to blank the drive only, and that's good enough really.

CaptainCrash · 6 Nov 2011 at 22:03

hohum said:
I was under the impression that the reason it takes so long to do a regular format and not a 'quick' format is because it error checks the entire drive, and doesn't actually wipe anything.

That was true for Windows XP and before - a full format would just check the drive for bad blocks without actually overwriting anything, so you'd need a third-party utility to make the data unrecoverable. However, Vista and 7 do perform a zero fill during a full format.

If you're not sure, it's easy enough to verify for yourself if you have a spare drive, a recovery utility or disk editor and some time on your hands.

Hotwired · 6 Nov 2011 at 22:25

Kaiju said:
I've heard of a couple of programs that zero (nuke!) your drive but some users complained those programs rendered their drives unusable.

Yes and no.

Formatting a drive sets it up for having files stored on it. Your operating system can then use it. Doing that to a drive with files already on it will for unimportant purposes, delete the files. For important purposes, the files are still there and can be recovered with the right programs. To be safe you would erase the drive.

Erasing a drive involves writing either a fixed or random pattern to the drive at a very detailed level, this damages or completely destroys the "memory" of data that was stored on the drive. This makes it much more difficult to impossible to see what the data was even with recovery programs.

Erasing removes formatting too, without formatting the operating system may no longer display the drive. Thus causing people to think the drive has been broken. In fact the drive merely needs to be formatted again.

Sean86 · 7 Nov 2011 at 04:26

I also use DBAN or Active kill disk. Ive only ever killed 1 hd after going through a phase of running DBAN once a week for a month or so lol.

SoundsGood · 7 Nov 2011 at 04:57

No idea how effective it is but I like to run "cipher /w"

CaptainCrash · 7 Nov 2011 at 08:10

SoundsGood said:
No idea how effective it is but I like to run "cipher /w"

I'm sure it's effective at what it does, but don't forget it will only overwrite the *free space* on a drive, leaving existing files intact.

I guess you could just delete everything in the root folder beforehand, but it might be simpler and more foolproof to use a method which zaps the entire volume in one hit.